


little by little (we'll get it right)

by petasos



Series: step by step, heartbeat by beat [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alcohol, Bulges and Nooks (Homestuck), Domestic Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kissing, Minor Sollux Captor/Aradia Megido, Minor Terezi Pyrope/Vriska Serket, Multi, Not Canon Compliant - The Homestuck Epilogues, Pesterlog(s) (Homestuck), Pining, Polyamory Negotiations, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Quadrant Vacillation, Roommates, Sex, eventual polyamory, nonbinary Terezi pyrope
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:21:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 28,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25112311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petasos/pseuds/petasos
Summary: This is the lengthy and incredibly complex (but not that complicated) story of how Sollux Captor, Terezi Pyrope, Jade Harley, Karkat Vantas, and Dave Strider come together, fall in love (or admit they were in love the whole time), and begin a relationship over the span of several years.(Alternatively titled: there's a lot of pining and fluff and problems, but they get through it.)
Relationships: Jade Harley/Terezi Pyrope/Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas, Sollux Captor/Jade Harley/Terezi Pyrope/Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas
Series: step by step, heartbeat by beat [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1819258
Kudos: 5
Collections: Polyswap Presents 2020





	1. jade.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [muchlessvermillion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/muchlessvermillion/gifts).



> ayyyy i said i'd post it. so, here's chapter one of ten (presumably. that's the amount i have in the outline.) each chapter focuses on one character and building up the relationship there - sort of?? i mean, the first two are about dave/jade and karkat/terezi respectively, but after that it's all uphill from there. i'm hoping to get a chapter out a month (well actually hopefully two a month!!) but y'know... sometimes life does not give you lemons and instead gives you trouble.
> 
> i feel like it's important to note the *reason* this is so damn long is that i didn't want to just magic 'em all together, i wanted 'em to work through their canon issues so they all work out together. that, plus i can get word-y.
> 
> also for some reason i put in the wrong title when i published this so that's fixed. title from "take my hand" by secret nation!!

The best thing in the world is waking up in the morning to the smell of bacon cooking from downstairs, wafting up to where you’re curled up around a pillow, drooling a little bit on said pillow. You push the covers off your legs - they were up around your shoulders when you went to sleep.

Silly asleep-Jade, kicking off the covers and making you cold. No wonder you were curled up in the fetal position! You must’ve been freezing!

You grab your t-shirt off the floor and pull it on, tossing on a pair of fuzzy pants too - going downstairs naked would definitely be a bad idea, given your roommates would probably be annoyed. Well, maybe Terezi wouldn’t, she is blind. But Karkat would get an eyeful, and you know Dave would sputter and turn tomato red.

Downstairs reveals the absolute best sight in the world: Dave, cooking breakfast, in his boxers, wearing a Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff shirt that’s a little too small on him - it rides up over his stomach, shows off a bit of his hips and abs. You check out that tiny inch of skin like it’s a choice cut of steak. And then also the rest of him. He’s tall, and lanky - he just had a growth spurt, and it made him look sort of out-of-proportion. But also, he’s toned. Which… _nice_.

He’s wearing his sunglasses. Indoors. In the morning. Hehehe.

You lazily drape your arms over his shoulders, your feet a few inches off the ground, he gives you that half-smile where the corner of his lips quirks up.

“There’s coffee in the machine,” he says. “We’re outta your creamer, though.”

“Awe, Dave, you didn’t drink it all, did you?”

“No, but you did, and then didn’t put it on the damn list.” He’s joking, and you lean over his shoulder to snatch a piece of bacon. It tastes great. As always. “I’m runnin’ to the store later, so I’ll pick it up.”

Oh, what _ever_ will you do without your Funfetti coffee creamer? The sweet cake-batter flavor, hints of frosting… alas, apparently you didn’t really think it through when you used up the rest of it!

You drift over to the fridge - benefits of being a god! Flying! - and pull open the door, grabbing some regular heavy whipping cream.

Your feet do touch the ground to make yourself some coffee, because you’d rather have balance, thank you very much. Luckily, there’s powdered creamer - you and Dave, the coffee and tea drinkers of the four of you living in this house, have a penchant for flavored syrups and various creamers, so you have what you’ve dubbed ‘the drink tray’, with two wire drawers filled with anything a beverage-drinking girl like you could ask for, and even some instant coffees to boot!

What can you say? You got hooked on coffee once you arrived on Earth C. _And_ it’s cheaper to have all _this_ than it is to frequent Starbucks, even if their s’mores drink tastes divine.

You sit down at the dining room table, coffee mug in one hand and plate of eggs and bacon on the other. Dave sits down next to you, sipping at his own cup of coffee and twiddling with his fork.

You can’t help but stare at the way his eyelashes brush his shades, how he licks at his lips, at the way he messes around with his phone and laughs at a bad joke and reads it aloud to you. 

The way the corners of his lips twitch up in a smile, showing off his dimples, it just gets to you. 

Ugh, it’s unfair!

He’s your best friend! You should NOT be thinking about him like this!

But for the past year and a half, since you created this universe and moved in with him (and Karkat, and Terezi), you just can’t help it. He’s there, all the time!

It doesn’t help that you sort of suck at the whole boundaries thing, and are constantly up in his grill. He used to be really uncomfortable with it, and would freeze up, and you backed up for a while, tried to keep physical contact to a minimum.

But now you can just drape yourself over him like a blanket and he doesn’t seem to mind.

Honestly, he actually seems to like it!

Which is great, except that having your head on his lap gets your heart beating a mile a second. Sometimes you just want to nuzzle up to him and stick to him like glue.

It’s silly, but that’s exactly how you feel. And you’ve always been a silly girl.

You help him clean up from breakfast - Karkat and Terezi are very much asleep, given the time of day. It’s nine AM, and even though you’re in the Troll Kingdom, with it’s perpetual cover of gloom (every city in the kingdom is covered in a protective bubble, keeping out the sunlight so trolls can freely walk around - geoengineer made, and kept up and operating by the Kingdom), they tend to sleep in ‘til noon, if not past that.

But they’re often up super late, so it sorta evens out. Even if it means you spend less time with them than you do Dave, but, it’s not like it really matters! You do get to see them when you can.

“You’re having lunch with Jake today, right?” Dave asks, and draws you out of your thought process. He’s pointing a fork at you, and you watch him shuffle the plates around in the dishwasher to fit the spatula in there. It takes him a few tries before he gives up, shoves it up on top of the bowls, and pops a detergent pod in there. “I can’t remember if that’s today or tomorrow.”

“Yes, that would be today!”

You and Jake are going to sit down and discuss plans for SkaiaNet - he’s eighteen now, same as you. You assume he thinks that being an adult means he’s mature enough to handle a whole company, but Jane’s been running Crockercorp basically since the moment you fast-forwarded into the year 1 ACA (after creators’ arrival, in short-hand), and honestly you think Jake probably _shouldn’t_ try his hand at running an entire company.

As much as you love your dear grandpa, he really seems to enjoy his TV show a lot more.

You really need to help him get out of this funk, and that’s what the green reminder on your pinky is for.

“Sweet,” says Dave, and he closes the dishwasher, starting it up, before lifting himself up onto the counter. The added height means you have to look up at him, and it’s not a bad angle. At all. “I figured I’d make burgers tonight, but since you’re goin’ out, wouldn’t wanna shovel too much food into your stomach. Hey, if you go to Olive Garden again, mind snatching some breadsticks or something?”

“Always,” you say, and he grins at you. “It’d be rude to keep you from your breadsticks!”

“See, I knew there was a reason I liked you, s’all that free food you give me.”

“Is that really it?”

He purses his lips, before shrugging - it’s a full-bodied thing, the way he moves his arms with him. Over text, it was hard to read Dave sometimes, but he’s easier to read than half of the people you know.

He talks with his hands. Loudly. Every single time.

It’s kinda cute.

“Nah. It’s actually those ears. I mean, look at you, with those dang doggy ears. It’s adorable.”

You wag your tail a little at that. You, too, are easy to read. “Don’t be silly. Also, you shouldn’t sit on the counter!”

“Hey, don’t turn into house-mom. You sit up here too.” He kicks at the dishwasher a little, the low rumbling white-noise to your ears. “I’ve seen you sitting up here all criss-cross-apple-sauce with your leftovers, eating chicken right off the carcass like a rabid vulture prying it apart with those mangy little fingers. Not that your fingers are mangy, you got nice fingers, nice hands in general really - not that m’saying only your hands are nice, you’re -”

You cut him off before he accidentally flirts with you. His Freudian slips are really only funny when they’re not directed at you, and feeding right into the messy pile of ‘crush’ you got going on.

Ugh!! You know if he knew what he was doing to you, he’d stop, but you can’t really TELL him. Ach, he always makes your voice go up in pitch a little and your body feel all nervous!

You cross your arms and pout at him. “Okay, okay, but I like rotisserie chickens! They taste good! And tearing them up is a lot of fun, Dave.”

“Hey, did I say it wasn’t? Don’t give me the puppy eyes, Harley, you know I can’t deal with that. It’s too much for my mortal chassis.”

“Well, maybe if your mortal chassis overloaded, you’d get used to the puppy eyes!”

“Can’t argue with that,” Dave says, and hops down from the counter. The dusting of freckles on his cheeks and nose is a lot more prominent this close. “I’m gonna go shower. Wait, you don’t need to shower before your big date with Jake, right?”

“No, it’s okay.”

“Cool.” He attempts to shove his hands in his pockets, before apparently realizing he’s wearing his boxers, and sighs. “If I’m not out before you go, see ya later.”

You giggle a little. “Bye.”

“No, you hang up.”

“Hey! I said bye, not ‘you say bye.’”

Dave pushes his hair out of his face, and you can tell he’s struggling not to laugh. “Bye two, the sequel to bye. Shown only in theatres near you starting right now, so buy some popcorn to have with it and don’t forget the overpriced candy. Christ, that shit’s expensive.” He pauses, meeting your eyes. “Have fun with Jake.”

“I will,” you say, and your stomach does that very annoying flutter thing. You end up fiddling with the reminders on your fingers, staring down at your paint-chipped nails. When you look up, he’s already turned away.

You watch him go, mumbling to himself as he heads towards the bathroom. He might honestly be rapping, although you can’t tell.

You teleport over to the couch and slump down, covering your face with your hands.

Because you, Miss Jade Harley, are in incredibly very much _deep_. Practically waist-deep, with how dumb this situation is. You are very, very, _very_ much in love with your best friend, and it very much sucks.

* * *

Lunch with Jake goes as it usually does. You meet him at the restaurant he picks - you really don’t have opinions on food, aside from ‘fruits and veggies are good, and meat is very good.’ The latter has only been something you’ve thought for the past five-ish years, since you were prototyped with Bec. Before that, you lived off fruits and vegetables, and sometimes a nice piece of fish.

Jake picks an Asian-flux restaurant in the Human Kingdom, and you teleport over there, checking out the menu. Flux restaurants are apparently common in the Human Kingdom - the food’s about as close to Original Earth’s Asian food as possible, but food on Earth C has developed on it’s own, so you have sushi with Alternian fish, noodles with a sauce you doubt is actually Asian, etc. 

The food fluctuates, in short! Differs from the original source material, or something.

Jake smiles at you the second he sees you, heading towards you with a big grin on his face. He’s shorter than you by about three inches, maybe four, but he’s just as strong as you and wraps you up in a hug that squeezes all the air right out of you. “Jade!”

“Jake!” you say, once he lets go, and you can actually breathe. “It’s been a while! How are you? How’s the Consort Kingdom?”

“It has! I’m good, and the kingdom has been, too.” He has a sunburn on his arms, you can see that much. You would love to remind him to slather some on before he goes out, but you don’t want to be overbearing. You’re not really his grandma, nor have you ever seen yourself as one, and he’s actually your dad via ectobiology.

You get a table - it’s a nice little restaurant, has one of those big Mongolian barbeque pits where you can watch them cook it!

You like the silk fans hanging on the walls, beautiful Asian-inspired paintings and paper lanterns and some sheer room dividers that make you wonder how much it’d cost to buy yourself one for your room.

It’s not like you don't have the money - Dave, with all his economical knowledge, set up funds for all of you _before_ you fast-tracked into the future. The Mayor set up accounts for all of you, and they gathered interest over five thousand years, so now you’re basically set for life! You don’t know a lot about money, or economics (you’re more of a science gal yourself), but Dave knows enough on the matter for all of you.

Jake orders for both of you. He always does, given he knows what’s trendy in the food department. His TV show has taken him across the world, and he’s tasted all sorts of cool foods. 

Sometimes, you consider going along with him for a few episodes.

“She’ll have the pork dumplings, the Beforus roll, and dum aloo. I’ll take the spring rolls, egg drop soup, and duck.” He sets down his menu, and the waiter nods, scrawling it all down, before heading off to the kitchen - you watch her ponytail bounce for a moment.

You sip at your Sprite, watching him pull his laptop out of his sylladex and push the napkin container out of the way. The chatter of people talking, laughing and silverware clinking together - it’s a lot of noise, and your ears fold down a little to try and cut it out. You have two sets of ears, everything’s always too loud and too much. And with the smells? Steam and spices and perfume and grease and body odor - your doggy senses are really having a field day, especially when you smell something akin to bacon.

Down, girl!

“So what’s on the agenda for today?” you finally ask, once you’ve gotten used to the noise and smell.

“Well,” says Jake, slowly, “I figure, if I’m going to start up a company devoted to science, tech, and the expansion of knowledge, without botching it all, I need to actually… have better knowledge on science and tech myself! And obviously, I need to figure out what divisions and sections and… well, I don’t really want to mess up! I may be good at blustering, but I’d rather not ruin this for myself.”

You listen to him talk for about twenty minutes - “Dirk’s rather consternated about the idea”, and “despite how much Tavvy’s been in the druthers about me running a company, I think he’s finally catching onto the idea it may not be such a bad thing!” pop out - and offer up your own advice on the subject, before your food gets there. It tastes good!

Of course it does, Jake ordered for you.

You might have to come back here, you _bet_ Karkat would love this sushi. Terezi would probably like the dumplings… you should take them both here sometime, or bring them back something for their breakfast/lunch!

But… you have more pressing problems.

“Jake, why are you starting up a company?”

Jake frowns at you. “What do you mean?”

“Well… you seem really happy with your show, and it kinda seems like you’re only starting this up so you’re on the same level as Jane! I know she’s running Crockercorp really well - you’re not jealous, are you?”

His aforementioned frown deepens, a crease forming between his brows. “I… It’s for my grandmother. She’d want SkaiaNet to exist here.”

“Would she?” You don’t know a lot about Jake’s grandma, but you do know that she was you, in another universe, same as Jane’s grandpa was John. And you don’t think you’d want Jake to build up a company just ‘cause he can! “I mean, didn’t she only make it to rival Crockercorp? Unless you’re doing that, which you shouldn’t need to, Jane’s a good person! She’d never be like that!”

“Oh, I know, it’s just… well, as horseshitty as it sounds, I do want to make a mint, you know? As much as people like staring at my posterior on live television - and I know that’s why they tune in - I want to be remembered for more!”

“Jake,” you say, and lean over, putting your hand over his, “you’re one of the Creators! Everyone’s going to remember you, ‘cause you helped create this universe! I mean, you have churches in your honor! The Church of Hope has a LOT of people in it, you know.”

“I doubt it has as many as your churches do…”

You roll your eyes behind your glasses. They’re a bit smudged. You should clean them off. “Does that matter? What I mean is that you’re going to be remembered whether you like it or not! If you want to just go on adventures on TV, while people stare at your butt, then you should just do that! You really don’t gotta start up an _entire company_ just ‘cause your best friend did.”

“Well, I’d rather not be treated like a piece of manmeat for staring at… but I see what you mean.”

You laugh a little at the expression on his face. “Good! Now, if you WANT to run a company, I think you should, but _do_ you?”

“Erm. Honestly, no.”

Yay! Daily goal finished, you can go home now.

Not really.

“What DO you wanna do?”

He blinks at you, like this is a question he’s never once been asked before, something he’s never even considered. “Well… I do like my TV show,” he says, and scratches at his cheek for a moment, head tilted a little. “And I like spending time with my friends… running a company would probably take away from that, wouldn’t it?”

“Maybe? I wouldn’t know.”

“I know Jane’s been awfully busy lately… a mite busier than she was before she started up Crockercorp 2.0, I’d wager.”

You nod at him, your ears perked up to show you’re very much listening. He looks like he’s pondering quite a lot, and you don’t blame him - he’s spent the past month-ish looking into starting up SkaiaNet, the sequel! He’s spent time he could’ve spent with his friends, calling you up for help on his company.

And you don’t mind, really. You’ve been looking into going to college, but you really don’t have much else to do aside from messing around with alchemy or jamming with Dave and John or occasionally offering up your help in the Crockercorp labs, testing out the flavors Jane’s come up with - or gardening, of course, but that’s obvious! Garden is literally in your Pesterchum handle.

But, back to Jake.

“So… do you think you’d miss out if you started up a company? You wouldn’t have time to hang out with Dirk and Gcatavrosprite, you wouldn’t really have time for your TV show either… do you think you’d miss those?”

“Erm… probably, yes,” he says, and sighs, pushing away his half-empty bowl of soup to prop his elbows on the table, rest his head in his hands, his glasses pushed up and out of the way. You lean over and pat him on the shoulder, trying to be comforting. “I sort of wasted the past month, didn’t I?”

“That depends if you think it’s a waste!”

Jake looks up at you, lips pinched together.

You’re playing with the silky tablecloth, staring at the sliced up duck on his plate. You wonder if he’ll let you have a piece, just a little bit, just to try it. You don’t want to come off like you’re desperate for food - or like you’re fussing over him, which is why you’re just listening and giving a warm smile (at least, you think it’s warm!) and not leaning over to pat him on the shoulder more.

You’re trying to be supportive!!!

Even if you know you don’t have to help him, or any of your friends… you always feel like you do. You wonder if you’d even be useful were it not for how cheerily helpful you can be.

Finally, he lets out a wistful sigh, and squares his shoulders. “I guess it wasn’t - it means I’ll think twice before deciding, spur of the moment, to start up a new project again. Still, I wish I’d realized sooner… you’ve been a lot of help with all these plans and thoughts and things, if that means anything. Bravo, Jade, you’ve done it again, haven’t you?”

Hehehehe. “Thanks,” you say, and take a sip of your Sprite. “All in a day’s work!”

* * *

When you get home, Dave’s sprawled out on the couch. He gives you a wave when you come in, but he’s fixated on some crime drama on TV, even if his hands are occupied with his phone. You know he can multitask like nobody else - he’s Dave, it’s his thing.

You hear something moving around in the kitchen, which means Karkat or Terezi - or both! - is awake and fixing themself breakfast. You poke your head through the doorway, see Karkat stumbling around and pouring himself a bowl of Fefer-O’s. He grabs the orange juice before making a disgruntled noise and shoving it into the back of the fridge, replacing it with some milk.

Until Karkat, you didn’t think people poured their milk first, and then the cereal - it just makes a mess, with how the cereal plops in. But apparently they do!

“Hey, Karkat!”

“ _Jegus mother of holy fuck_ ,” he half-shouts, and almost drops the milk. “Can you turn down the cheeriness for a second? As fucking _fascinating_ as hearing your buoyant tone is, it’s also fucking infuriating.”

“Good morning to you too,” you say, and deposit your doggy bag (haha) on the counter. “I got you some sushi! Don’t touch the dumplings, those are for Terezi. Is she awake yet?”

Karkat groans at you, picking up his bowl. “How the hell would I know?”

You watch him head over to the table, pushing Dave’s laptop and headphones out of the way. The headphones fall into a chair with a bang, almost dragging the laptop down with it, and Karkat just looks at it and sighs before plopping down onto his chair. It’d be sort of funny if Karkat didn’t look so annoyed, cursing loudly as he pulls the headphones up via the cord.

You’ll be honest - you don’t like Karkat all that much. He’s your friend, sure, and you do care about him… but, well. You’re very good at holding grudges - he spent a good chunk of your childhood harassing you, after all.

Not that you’d ever admit you’re holding a grudge, and nobody is EVER going to find out.

You even have some reminders on your fingers for him.

“I’m going to put these in the fridge,” you say.

“Go right on ahead,” says Karkat, yawning, before shoveling some cereal into his mouth. His hair’s a mess, sticking up on one side more than usual, flat on the other - clearly he just woke up, which means your third and final roomie is probably not far behind.

Or maybe she’s already been through here, and is currently working on her homework.

You’re very proud of Terezi! She’s working towards being a proper legislator. Law school seems like it’s boring, but she definitely enjoys it. You’ve even seen her take a bite of her homework once or twice. Sometimes you wonder if it’s pica, but she doesn’t seem to actually swallow it, just spits out the paper after with an excited look on her face.

Sure, before and during the game, you and Terezi didn’t interact much - but you’ve had almost two years now to make up for that, and make up for it you certainly have.

She took you paintballing once. You spent the day laughing, covered in paint, and trying to chase her down. She may be blind, but her smell-o-vision’s great, and in the end, she won that game.

Given you’re the only women in the house (although you’re not sure how much ‘male’ and ‘female’ apply to trolls, you know they’re functionally intersex and gender roles don’t really apply to trolls, and if anything their pronouns are just that - pronouns), you’ve bonded over some things Dave and Karkat just don’t _get_ \- like science, and law.

So you leave Karkat to it, and head off to find Terezi.

She’s actually out in the garden - you discover this after checking her bedroom (which is a mess of scalemates and law books), the living room, basement (which is actually more of a second living room, honestly) and the soundroom (a room aptly dubbed ‘cause it’s where you and Dave keep your musical gear, and an extra electric piano for John.)

There she is, sitting under one of your trees. While the Troll Kingdom may be dark, your garden is anything but - from the bright red roses to the daisies and lilies (and some bluebonnets, for Dave, to remind him of the good parts of home) to the brightly painted buckets and the beautiful blue blossoms on your lattice. It’s a nice late February day, and the weather is not too warm, not too cool. You tread towards her, stepping over birdseed and beetles, almost trip over a rake you left out - whoops!

“Hey, Terezi!”

She doesn’t look up at you so much as she looks right at you, her head swivelling to give you a toothy grin. There’s a half-eaten apple in her hand - from your tree, no less! You guess Dave’s time powers really did work to speed up the growth, it looks nice and juicy and a vibrant shade of green. Exactly how you wanted it to be!

“If it isn’t my favorite Harley,” Terezi says, and pats the ground next to her.

You plop down - your skirt will probably have grass stains on the butt, but you don’t really care. “What’re you doing out here?”

She takes a very loud bite of her apple, swallows, then speaks. “I needed some nice, fresh, outdoorsy time. You hear that? Listen closely.”

You pause, ears twitching. The skitter of a squirrel down one of your other trees catches your attention first, and your tail thumps against the ground for a moment. A nice, cool breeze pushes through the leaves. You’re far enough away from other people that you can’t hear them, but you can hear birds chirping - they’re accustomed to the nearly perpetual gray overhead, fake clouds shielding you all from the sun.

“It’s really nice, isn’t it? Sort of reminds me of my island,” you say, and pull some grass up from the ground, sprinkling it back down. “If my island was gloomier, and you couldn’t hear the ocean.”

Sometimes you miss your island.

Mostly you don’t.

Mostly, you just miss Bec - but he’s a part of you, as much as your hands or feet. His instincts definitely carried over to you, ‘cause you’ve caught yourself getting too defensive when you might be in danger, teleporting yourself away when you trip and fall. It’s honestly nice to know he’s still watching out for you, making sure you don’t get yourself in trouble.

“Your island sounds boring,” Terezi informs you.

You laugh, and elbow her a little. “It was home! I can’t really go back to it, it was on the pre-scratch Earth. I’m allowed to be a little bit nostalgic!”

“Well, _I_ don’t miss Alternia,” she says, and shrugs, before taking another noisy bite of her apple. It’s a bit grating on your nerves, but you don’t say anything. “That place was a death pit. Have you seen those pits of balls your human wigglers have? Alternia was like that, if ninety percent of the balls were spikes. But don’t let me get mopey.”

“No being mopey, Terezi, it’s a bad look on you! You look way better not moping.”

She grins wide at you. You think it goes up to her eyes, but you can’t see them past the red shades she wears.

She doesn’t always wear them. When she’s inside, she basically never does - it’s really only when she leaves the house that she puts them on.

You know they used to be part of her FLARP uniform, but she doesn’t FLARP anymore, since it doesn’t exist here. Although, you’ve seen her grabbing LARPing packets before, at the library. Maybe she’ll get back into roleplaying - you hope so, you want to see the costumes!

(And also sort of maybe want to give it a try, but Dave’s never seemed enthused by the subject, and you doubt Karkat would do anything aside from laugh at you if you mentioned it.)

“Jade, Jade, Jade,” Terezi says, making a tsking noise with her tongue. “You’re going to piss off my anguish bladder, don’t do that.”

“An anguish bladder isn’t real. You just made that up.”

“Oh, no, it’s real. It’s what stores dismay fluid.”

“You also totally made that up,” you say, with stiff certainty.

Terezi cackles. It’s the best noise to describe her laugh, because there are no other words for it. She cackles like the Wicked Witch from _Wizard of Oz_ , she cackles like a bad anime villain that Dirk would plaster a poster of onto his wall. “Tears, Jade! Your human tears. We have different names for our body parts, you know.”

“‘Human tears’ is stupid, they’re just tears,” you say, rolling your eyes, and sprinkle some grass onto her.

She cackles even harder. “You and your human terminology, refuting all the evidence stacked against you. On Alternia, I could find you guilty for not acknowledging our language, and you would be sentenced to a just death at the hands of His Honorable Tyranny, long may he cull.”

“Aren’t I your friend?”

“Trolls have no term for friendship. You are as much my friend as my enemy, and I would hand you over to his Tyranny without a second thought.” Her mouth splits open almost eerily, and she leans over, licking you right on the cheek. It’s gross, and slimy, but dog instincts go !!! and you almost lick her back. “Just kidding. I would never. _Or would I_?”

She wiggles her fingers at you.

You shift, the bark of the tree rubbing against your back, the filtered-through sun warm against what isn’t shadowed by your lovely apple tree. You think, maybe, that you should put up a swing, now that this tree’s tall enough. Or put up a trampoline, maybe - your yard’s large enough for one, and you’ve always wanted a trampoline!

“I think,” you say, breaking from your thoughts, “that we should get a trampoline.”

“Those bouncy things that human wigglers like?”

“Yeah! I never had one when I was a kid - I know I can fly and all, but, I think it’d be fun.”

Terezi’s mouth does that curvy thing that almost looks like a question mark, complete with a dimple on the side of her mouth. That’s something she and Dave have in common - dimples. Hers are more prominent, though - Dave’s take coaxing out by getting him to smile.

They’re honestly both kinda cute, though.

Not that you think Terezi’s cute or anything!!! Sure, she’s a rather attractive young woman. She’s chubby, soft body and sharp eyes behind her glasses, an inhuman grin with sharp teeth. Her horns are really sharp, too - you almost ruptured something once, trying to angle your way past her. Terezi is her own contradiction: jagged in some places, soft in others, balancing out into something uniquely her.

“Well, if you get one, let me know. I will be the first to try it out.” Terezi pushes up and onto her feet, heading back inside, taking yet another bite out of her apple. She doesn’t even say goodbye.

* * *

It’s funny, that you can sit here and stare at Dave all day, just watch him mess around and work on his tunes, and he doesn’t seem to notice. You don’t think he means to ignore you, he just gets caught up in work that he forgets you’re there, humming along to the track he’s building up and jotting down lyrics. It’s a unique process, and you’re one of a few who actually gets to watch it happen.

His music always winds up good - he’s really good with his equipment! He has nimble fingers, and can get a beat down quicker than even you can. And sometimes, you’re lucky enough to get to contribute.

Which you’re supposed to be doing right now.

You have your bass set up to make some noise, but Dave’s currently sticking his tongue out between his teeth and shaking his hips to the music only he can hear. Well, you can hear it, given it’s spilling out of his headphones, and your hearing is also _far_ better than the average human being - it’s good! You like the ribbity thump of the synthesized drums, the techno-y synthesizer, his launchpad adding to the beat. Only Dave could make this all sound good together.

Okay, there are PROBABLY other people who could, but you’ve never met them.

And it’s honestly sort of nice to watch him get lost in building up a song, drawing it up, amping up the noise and making something. It’s even nicer to be included in it.

He’s humming under his breath as he works something new into the song, maybe a violin or cello. He’s got this very concentrated look on his face, lips pressed together, and every time he gets something that sounds good his mouth twitches and he glances over at you for approval.

So maybe he didn’t forget you’re here! Score for Team Harley.

“Hey, do you still want me to help?” you ask, leaning over to wave your hand in front of his face.

He laughs at that, brows raised behind his shades. He pushes his headphones down to his neck and pauses the song. It’s like all the noise is sucked out of the room, and you’re just left hearing your heartbeat, fast and hammering in your throat.

“Sorry, kinda -” he gestures at his laptop and equipment. “- got caught up in it, forgot I asked for your expert advice.”

You giggle. “Me, an expert in music?”

“You see that bass right there? I could _never_. Remember when I tried pickin’ up the guitar and I couldn’t even learn fucking _Wonderwall_? And here you are, with your bass and flute skills through the fucking roof. You’ve reached the top of the music echeladder and there’s nothing but clouds up there. Better watch your head, might hit one and get rained on.”

“You know, I flew through a cloud once!”

Dave doesn’t look impressed at that, but then again, he often doesn’t. He’s pretty poker-faced, all things considered. And you know _why_ \- showing emotion got his ass kicked, when he was a kid. But it still doesn’t stop the body language, of which there is PLENTY.

And he has a nice body, too, and the way he gestures always draws attention to his toned arms and… gosh you really are going to die from crushing on him, aren’t you?

“Haven’t we all?” he says, brow raised. “One time I almost rammed right into a building, ‘cause the glass was reflective. Guess that’s how birds feel.”

“Probably! At least you didn’t break your arm or die or something. That would be horrible.”

“Oh, yeah. You’d be checking out my body at the morgue, questioning why the fuck my face looks like that. Did I run into a brick wall? Did I get my face smashed in by some robber, who I valiantly fought off and failed miserably, getting stabbed in the side before he runs off with my wallet? Nah, I turned into a fucking bird and ran into my reflection. Bam, there goes Dave Strider, skidding down the side of a building, leaving a snail-y trail of blood behind.”

“Oh no! That sounds… really gross. And also bad. What would we do with your body?”

He leans back against the table. “No idea. Maybe stash me in an urn somewhere, scatter my ashes across the plains of Texas. I think that’s illegal. Just do me one solid if that happens, ‘kay?”

“Yeah?”

“Delete my internet history. I don’t want someone checking up my shit and findin’ out I’m a huge perv.”

You roll your eyes, setting down your bass. “Sure, I can delete your internet history so nobody finds out what kinda weird puppet porn you watch.”

“Gasp, I can’t believe you’d _say_ that,” Dave says - and he actually _says_ the word gasp out loud. 

It’s enough to send you into a fit of giggles, grabbing at the table for support. He looks a bit concerned for a moment, reaching out to help steady you.

“You okay?”

His hand on your arms just sends a sweet tingle down your spine, right into your stomach, and you’re struck with the very annoying urge to kiss him right on the mouth.

You don’t, though.

He means so much to you - if you kissed him right now, he’d be disgusted in you, and you’d lose your best friend _forever_. He’d tell you to leave, and you’d go and hide under your covers and cry and then Karkat and Terezi would find out and they’d be pissed at you for ruining what you all have going on, your little friend circle suddenly shattered all because you wanted to smooch Dave Strider on his stupid fucking lips!!!!

But it does bring heat to your cheeks, and you pull away from him. Your chest feels heavy, like bricks in your stomach are weighing you down.

You force a laugh - well, it’s not entirely forced, you can’t really stay mopey when Dave’s looking at you like that. “I’m okay,” you say, and smile softly at him.

But god do you want him so badly. You’ve wanted a lot of things in your lifetime, but you’ve never craved anything as badly as you do him - you want to hold him close, you want to kiss him all over his perfect face, you want to push his hair out of his face when his bangs fall in his eyes. You want to watch him sleep, hear his heartbeat when you go to bed, wake up next to him and steal his shirt even though it’d be a little small on you. You want to take off his sunglasses!! You want to wash his hair in the shower!!!

Not that he has any idea.

But he’s smiling back at you, and your heart aches, and he tucks a strand of hair behind your ear and he has NO IDEA how much that makes your stomach flutter up like a botanical garden’s living in there. “Wanna grab lunch? I’m kinda craving fries and a shake. Maybe a hotdog or something.”

Your heart and stomach both go !!!! at the same time. “Yes! Absolutely! You sure know a way to a girl’s heart, Dave.”

“Is it the stomach? It’s through the stomach, isn’t it.”

“Duh! Obviously,” you say, and roll your shoulders as you stretch, shaking the longing out of your skin. You do not need to sit there and pine after Dave while you have lunch, that’d be ridiculous. You have food to eat! Conversations to have! “But you gotta let me help out with your song when we get back, ‘cause I really do want to!”

“Deal,” he says, and holds out his hand.

You put your hand in his, and shake.

* * *

Oftentimes, you dream about Prospit, with it’s golden cathedrals and beautiful yellow roads - you really miss waking up there, seeing the future in the clouds. Of course, it’s been years since you’ve actually been there. But you still have dreams, and given you merged with your dreamself as all who godtier do, they’re pretty dang vivid.

Sometimes, you dream about the battleship, and you wake up lonely, aching. Sometimes, you dream about your island, about Bec - sometimes you dream through his eyes. And sometimes, as much as you hate it, you dream about the Land of Frost and Frogs, about hunting frogs with Dave, about Jack Noir. About killing Dave.

Tonight’s one of those nights, and you wake up shaking, a stifled scream on your lips. You can almost feel the blood on your hands, feel his lips against yours, tears running down your face as you kissed him so he’d be alive again. And that was the last time you saw him for three years - three years, praying he wouldn’t hate you for killing him.

It felt so real - holding his body, still warm. His shirt, covered in holes and blood. His shades had gone lopsided, and you pocketed them, when shock had finally left - you gave them back to him when you talked to him, after the battle, and he’d given you this look like he’d completely forgotten about that day.

You didn’t. You can’t forget about it.

You know, logically, that it was a dream, and that he was fine, but it’s 3 am and you’re knocking on his bedroom door. You can see the light flick on from under it, and he opens the door, a groggy look on his face, his hair sleep-mussed and sunglasses abandoned on his bedside table. He’s only wearing his underwear, which leaves very little to be imagined, but you’re not really looking at his body.

You’re just shaking.

“Jade?” he says, and he sounds exhausted, half-asleep. He looks you up and down - you only pulled on a shirt because you had to, didn’t want to give him an eyeful. “S’like, three in the mornin’. Are - are you crying?”

You choke back a sob - god, you really want to pull him close and make sure he’s actually here and you’re not having another dream (you had so many dreams, back on the ship, where you were hanging out with him and then he froze and _there was so much blood_.) But you can hear his heartbeat, just barely make it out when you lurch forward and into his arms.

He tenses up a little, but puts a hand on your back. You can feel it through the thin fabric, and you melt into his arms. He doesn’t say anything, just closes the door, leads you to his bed.

His bedroom’s a mess, clothes on the floor, pictures hanging from strings on the walls and overhead - you have to duck so you don’t hit some of them. At least it doesn’t smell bad. He doesn’t smell bad, either. He just smells like Dave, and you bury your face in his neck, breathing him in. You can hear his heartbeat - loud and real and alive.

“I dreamed about when you died,” you finally say, and pull away, wiping off your tears. Gosh, you must look like a mess, coming and bothering Dave when he’s asleep. You _feel_ like a mess. You just want to collapse in on yourself, become a blackhole like many a star does.

You’re _wilting_ , it’s the only way to describe how you’re curled in on yourself, bowed shoulders, arms around your knees and rubbing at the unshaved skin on your legs.

Dave swallows, and you can see the guilt written all over his face. “M’sorry, Jade. I - I shoulda warned you ‘bout it -”

You know what he means (you’ve had this conversation before. You’ve had a _lot_ of conversations before), but it just makes you shudder even harder. It surprises you, quite a bit, when he pulls you close, his head tucked in between yours and your shoulder. You just _shake_ , hard, clinging to him with shaky hands.

“It’s my fault,” he murmurs, and your stomach just _aches_. You feel really dizzy, like you’re not breathing properly. “We were kids, but I - I dunno, I just, I figured telling you would hurt you. I know you’re strong, probably stronger than me -”

“That’s not true,” you mumble, right into his collarbone.

“Nah. It is. I - I wanted to be the hero. Wanted to save you, since you were the ‘damsel-in-distress.’ I thought you were a - a, well, a liability, I guess. I mean, I wasn’t the hero and you weren’t a liability at all... all I did was fuck up, but, we already know I’m pretty damn good at that. I’m… m’really sorry that I did that to you.” He moves a little, his hand stroking at your back, brushing through your hair. His voice is strained, but soothing, comforting. “You’re a lot stronger than I am, and y’know that’s true. I just - I guess - well, I guess I didn’t wanna admit it.”

He sighs - and you can feel it, given your head’s right against his chest. You can feel his breathing, hear his slowed heartbeat, and it’s really all you can ask for. Even if he’s clumsily stroking at your hair, smoothing it down, working out the tangles. You’re still crying, but it’s lessened now.

You don’t really want to leave.

At least he’s being honest, and not closing off like he did when you were kids. You guess the therapy he’s been going to has helped.

“S’okay,” you hear him saying, voice low. “I’m here. I’m not dead. Nothing’s gonna kill me anytime soon, and if it does, Jane can revive me, okay?” He swallows, and plants his chin on top of your head, and even though the way you’re curled against him is awkward, you’re thankful for it. “Not gonna go anywhere. Never gonna do that to you again.”

He pauses, and it’s a very long pause - you just shiver against him, the ceiling fan blowing on your bare legs. “D’you want some water, or somethin’? Tea, maybe?”

You shake your head against his chest, inhaling and exhaling, before you pull back.

He’s looking at you with an expression you can’t name, lips parted a little like he’s about to say something. He’s still leaning towards you, his arms dangling a little where they were holding you close, his voice unsteady when he finally speaks again.

“You can, uh, stay here, tonight, if you don’t wanna be alone.”

“Are you sure?” you ask.

“Yeah.” He pauses, then, with a shaky hand, reaches over, puts his hand on your arm. You’re propped up by the pillows now, from how the two of you moved together. Your legs are sort of entangled with his, and while you’ve been this close to him before, even closer sometimes, this feels… right. “I wish I - I wish I’d told you. Y’know, that day with you, hunting frogs - best hour or so of my life, at the time. You were my best friend. Still are, don’t get me wrong.”

“Not Terezi or Karkat?” you ask, and your voice is soft, quiet, so you don’t wake up your friends.

In the dull light from his lamp, it’s harder to see the crease of his brow, the tilt of his mouth. “Well, I wouldn’t say that. Karkat’s one of my best friends, and I don’t think I’d be where I am now w’out him. And Terezi - I mean, she’s Terezi, I can’t not consider her my bestie. But you’re - you’re not them, they’re not you.”

Your mouth goes dry. “You’re my best friend, too.”

“Not Rose or John?” he asks, tone teasing - he moves so he’s more mirroring you now, head on his pillow. You’re thankful his bed’s a bit big.

“No. It’s you. Always has been you, Dave.”

His hand trails down your arm, until his palm is flat against yours, and his fingers intertwine with yours.

“Always been you, too.”

Maybe it’s from the desperation, needing to make sure he’s alive. Maybe it’s the low lamp-light, the way his eyes look meeting yours, his hand against your own. Maybe it’s just because it’s him. You don’t know what it is, but something about the moment feels right. It doesn’t feel like anything’s going to be ruined at all.

But you lean forward, tilt your head, and kiss him.

Then your brain snaps into place and you realize what you’re doing and pull back.

Oh no, oh no, oh no! What have you done?

But Dave doesn’t seem to give a damn, because he’s leaning forward again, and pressing his mouth right against yours, and you’re not quite sure what he’s doing until you’re flat against your back on the sheets and he’s straddling your hips a little and kissing you and smiling, and you don’t really care that it’s like four in the morning now, or that you’ve been crying (still are a little bit) and your breath probably stinks and so does his, because he’s kissing you.

And you’re kissing him back.

Your hands are in his hair, and it’s soft and silky, and his hands are cupping at your face, and it’s a bit of an awkward angle but the two of you make it work, and you just kiss him like the world’s going to end if you stop.

You need to touch him, you need him to touch you, every inch of you.

It’s only when you both actually need air to breathe that you both pull apart, and you’re panting a little from the need for air. His face looks flushed, and yours definitely feels hot around the cheeks. Not that you really care.

“I’m so sorry,” you mumble.

He looks away, for a moment, moving off of you. “I - uh - did you not -”

“No! I did!” You’re scrambling so you’re sitting up. “I’ve, um, I’ve wanted to do that for a long, long, long time! Like, basically forever! But you’re my best friend!”

Dave scratches at the back of his neck. “D’you know how hard it is to not kiss you every single second of every day? ‘Cause, every time you’re next to me or making dumb faces at me to make me laugh or flomping on top of me ‘cause you’re tired and want company - I just -”

“Oh,” you say.

What _else_ are you supposed to say?

“I mean,” he says, awkwardly, “we don’t - we can pretend that didn’t happen, if you want.”

“I’d rather not,” you say, and your entire body is so hot that you feel like you’ve been living in a volcano for the past eight gazillion years.

He looks relieved at that, shoulders slumping. “Okay. Cool. Because I don’t wanna, either.”

You lean forward, putting your hands on his shoulders. “So we’re in agreement? That definitely happened? We definitely smooched?”

“Yep.”

“Can we do it again?”

Dave grins at you, lopsided, and leans in to kiss you. And it’s absolutely the best kiss you have ever had - not that you have many to go on, aside from it. Your hand is on his cheek - he really ought to shave - and resting against his jaw, the other still on his shoulders, and you push him down, kissing him hard.

It’s the sort of movie kiss that used to make you blush when you were a kid, the kind where you expect they’re going to start taking off clothes.

They never do, but when Dave’s hand slides up your shirt, resting against the small of your back - right up against your skin - you absolutely want _your_ clothes to come off. You want bare skin, you want to read every inch of him like braille. And he seems to be in agreement, with his mouth against your neck, pushing up your shirt.

He only stops to mumble a quick, “this okay?” and you kiss him in response, tail thumping against the bed, your mouth melding right against his before you pull back and shuck off your own shirt, tossing it behind you. It thuds, somewhere, although you have no idea where it landed. His eyes widen - probably ‘cause you’re not wearing anything under said shirt, so now all that’s between the two of you is his briefs and your panties.

“Wow,” he finally says, and the appreciation in his voice makes you giggle. “Holy _shit_ , you actually have boobs.”

“Did you think I didn’t?”

“No, I mean - I’ve seen you in a bikini before, just -”

You giggle even harder, and grab his hand, planting it firm on your breast. His eyes widen even more, and you expect his eyebrows to shoot right off his forehead at this rate. “I expect copious boob-touching, Dave.”

“Wow,” he says, again, and swallows, shaking his head a little, looking up at you. “Wow.”

“Is that all that’s in your vocabulary now? Is it just going to be ‘wow’ forever?”

“Can you blame me? The hottest girl I know just put my hand on her tits. Uh, very nice breasts you got here, ma’am. Very A plus, ten outta ten.” He gives your breast a squeeze, like it’s fruit he’s inspecting. “This - this isn’t a, like, we’re not -”

“Going to have sex?” you ask, your own eyebrows raised.

Well, you wouldn’t be _opposed_ , and you can tell he wouldn’t really be either, based on the fact you can _feel_ his reactions to your making out and also your boobs right under your butt - he’s definitely a little hard. You’re tempted to wiggle your butt a little - and since you’re giving into ALL your temptations tonight, you do just that.

His head tilts back, a sigh escaping his lips - his thumb’s pressed nicely against your nipple, rubbing a tiny bit, and gosh, you really want to kiss him more, that feels pretty good. “I dunno if I’m ready for that. I don’t - is this just a kissing thing? Are we just friends who kiss now?”

“Well,” you say, and pause your butt-wiggling. “I, um. I really like you, I thought that was kinda obvious.”

“Oh, no, it is, but.” He removes his hand from your breast, and you frown a little at that, but also, it’s an important conversation to have! Probably. You’ve never had this conversation before, with anyone. This is your ‘what are we’ conversation virginity, flying out the window. “I mean, I like you, too. A lot. I have since I was… nine? Ten, I guess? Pretty much since we met. I just - it wasn’t ‘til we were really in person. Then it smacked me right upside the head. The whole _‘wow_ , she’s fucking gorgeous and also really incredible, downright sublime, you’re going to get hit with the urge to kiss this girl _every time_ you see her for the next year and a half’ shebang.”

He’s blushing, a LOT, and it’s really honestly adorable, but you pull away, sitting cross-legged on his bed. He squeezes your hand in thanks - you’re not sure when his hand moved to yours, but you don’t mind.

“This is a weird conversation to be having in the middle of the night,” you say.

Dave _laughs_. It’s probably the best sound in the world. “Yeah. Stupid, right?”

“Very! But, you’re right. I mean, I really like you.”

“I really like you, too.”

“And I like kissing you.”

“I like kissing you, too, don’t get me wrong.”

“And I would like to maybe touch your dick right now.”

He gets all flustered at that, stumbling and sputtering over his words for a moment. “Um,” he says, and rakes a hand through his hair - it just flops right back down. “Ditto, I guess, or, whatever, but I’ve never -”

“Me neither! But that’s what I’m trying to get at. I like you. I want to do that stuff with you. And, maybe go on dates, and hold your hands, and sleep next to you.” Since you’re being brave and all, you suppose it’s okay to admit that. You just hope he doesn’t hate you, come morning. But you don’t think he will.

And Dave smiles at you, although it’s a bit clumsy, and he’s so red you can tell. Wow, you really did a number on him with that confession, huh?

“Yeah. I… wanna do that, too.” His voice is a bit… gravelly, deep in a way you didn’t think he could get, and it’s… really hot, honestly. He clears his throat. “All of that. All of the above, with a big fucking checkmark right there, signed and stamped and delivered.”

You curl your fingers into his. Hehehehe. This is really nice, isn’t it?

“Me too.”

“Look - uh - I know I already said it, but I do like you. And I do… want to see where this could go?” He scratches at his temple when he says that. “Since you do, too, I don’t think I’m wrong in saying that I wanna go out with you. Go steady, or whatever. S’just, like, it’s four in the morning, and my words are probably garbage, but also, your boobs. Holy _shit_ , Jade.”

“That was going great until you pointed out my boobs again.”

“This piehole’s got no filter, you know that. If you really want to hitch your wagon to this fine specimen, and honestly, I think I’m a real choice cut of man-meat if I do say so myself -”

You cut him off with a laugh and a kiss, right on his very nice mouth. “I do want to hitch my wagon to that. Even if it’s not permanently!”

“Let’s… not even think about that.”

Yeah, you’d rather not think about _that_ either. You DO want to kiss Dave some more, or maybe sleep on him, tucked under his arm with your head on his chest - or maybe his head on yours? You bet he’d like that. Your boobs would probably make great pillows. Or spooning! Maybe you could get him to be the big spoon, and grind up against his morning wood later on.

That would be nice. Very, very, very nice.

“Okay, no thinking about permanency or anything of the sort! Now, do you want me to touch your dick or not?”

Dave’s face goes back to fire-truck red, and you can’t help the laugh that spills out from your mouth - you really just can’t. He’s sort of sputtering over himself, like he’s looking for the right words.

And then Dave gives a shaky nod, before pausing. “I’d, uh, I’d like that, yeah, but… if I ask you to stop, you will, right?”

“Of course I will!” You just smile at him, kiss him right on his nose. “We really don’t have to do this, if you don’t _want_ to. I’ve just been thinking about it for an awfully long time, if I’m being honest.”

“I have, too,” Dave admits, and takes your hand again. “I mean, I _want_ to, don’t get me wrong. It’s just - this is moving a little fast, and people don’t usually do this on the first -”

“Okay, then we don’t gotta. I can just kiss you more! Any touch is good touch, Dave, I’m okay with waiting or even never doing that.”

He lets out a sigh of relief. “Um. Yeah. No, I mean, you can. S’okay. I just, I wanted to make sure you’d stop if I asked. Which, I know you would, obviously, but, uh. I’ve never done this before, with anyone. I mean, I haven’t really _wanted_ to, not like I couldn’t go find a partner if I DID want to. I think I’m at least averagely attractive. And, yeah, getting off is nice, but…”

You put a finger over his lips. “I’ll stop if you ask me to, ‘kay?”

“Okay,” he says, and wriggles out of his briefs. It’s sort of silly to watch. His dick rests against his stomach, and sort of springs up a little. The way it darkens and reddens in color from the rest of his skin is pretty interesting. It’s about the size of your favorite dildo - maybe six inches, a little girthier around, and you think you could _probably_ fit that inside you with a little lube, and you would LIKE to, but you don’t want to go get any lube, and you don’t think he has a condom.

So you just wrap a hand around his length, your thumb against the tip, smearing precum across the blunt head. He makes a cute little whiny noise and bucks up into your hands, arching his hips just a little. Success!

“Um, is this good? I don’t really know what I’m doing,” you say, “so if I do something you don’t like, tell me, okay?”

“You’re doing good so far,” he says, voice a bit high-pitched. He leans in, and you shuffle a bit so you’re closer, but not in an awkward way. He smells like sweat. “Y’can keep going.”

You don’t think you’re ready to fit him in your mouth, or anything, so a handjob will have to do. You stroke his length, taking care to be gentle with it - you could use some lube to help with the glide, but again, you don’t have any on you!

...but _Dave_ might.

“Hey, you don’t have any like, lube or lotion or something, do you?”

Dave pauses, and scrambles away from you, yanking open his second bedside drawer and shuffling around.

You can see some batteries in there, which means he’s probably got a vibrator (which you can use on him sometime if he lets you!!!), and you can see a bright neon green dildo (which maybe you could also use on him sometime!!! Maybe with a strap-on? You’ve always been interested in getting one, you just had no use for it before!), and… aha! Bingo!!

He gingerly hands you a bottle of water-based lube, apple-flavored. You squirt some onto your hand, give it a sniff, just from curiosity. It is, apparently, edible, according to the bottle, so if you do decide to give him a blowjob, you guess it won’t taste bad!

You carefully wrap your hand back around his dick, and he lets out a soft sigh in response. 

“Jade?”

“Yeah?” you say, and give him a stroke.

He _moans_. You don’t think you’ve ever heard a noise that beautiful, and you very much have to get him to make more of those. Gosh, you hope he doesn’t clam up and cover his mouth. “Shit. Uh. I was gonna ask if I could,” and he gives a vague gesture, although his other hand is grasping at the bedframe. “Get you off, after. Maybe.”

“I’d like that,” you say, and continue stroking him. His hips rock up. You find you _really_ like the feeling of him in your hand, hot and velvety, but still hard and firm against the palm of your hand. 

You move, so you’re actually able to kiss him, and he takes the bait, eagerly pressing his mouth against yours. You suck his bottom lip into your mouth, running your tongue across the crease, and twist your hand just a little. He moans right into your mouth, his eyes fluttering shut and his hand tilting back against the frame. You pull away, running your thumb down the underside of his dick, and he ruts up into your fingers. “Are you trying to fuck my hand? That’s really cute, Dave.”

Dave jerks into you. You can feel his dick twitching in your hand. That’s way better than your dildo. “Can’t say things like that, s’unfair.”

“Yes, I can, and I’m gonna! I bet you wish you were fucking me, huh?”

“Damn, Jade, what’s with the dirty mouth?”

You pap him on the cheek with your other hand. “I learned it from you.”

He practically melts into your hands when you grasp at him a little harder, adding just a little bit of pressure to the pads of your fingers. Clearly you’re doing something right, and when Dave sloppily plants a kiss to the corner of your lips, making a strangled little noise that goes right between your thighs, you do that again, moving your hands up his shaft, sliding back down with the wetness from the lube.

Speaking of wet, _you_ are very! Every little reaction Dave makes just spurns you on even more. You want to explore every single inch of him, and you guess starting here’s good, right? When you bring your other hand down to carefully cradle his balls - they feel different than you expected - he grabs at your shoulder a little, ends up with his hand half on your breast. You drag your thumb across the area between his balls (it probably has a scientific name but you’re too into this to remember.) He lets out a sharp moan, digging his hand into your skin.

Ouch.

“If,” Dave pants out, and he’s shivering where your skin meets, enough that you can _feel_ it, “you don’t slow down, m’gonna - like - right now -”

“I mean, I want you to,” you say, and press your thumb against the head.

He cries out, babbling words that slur together and don’t make much sense, his hips driving up into your hand. His eyes are all half-lidded, like he’s struggling to keep them open, and you can’t blame him! If he had his hands on your junk, you’d probably feel about the same - and you really want his hands on your junk but you gotta get him off first. Besides, you always get really sleepy after.

“ _Jade_ ,” Dave groans, and then outright mewls when you move around and take the head of his dick into your mouth. It, unlike your dildo, does not taste like plastic. You think you might gag, so you ease up a little, tonguing at his slit. It all tastes overwhelmingly apple, so you don’t know how it’ll hold up next time. He’s keening a little, his hand in your hair and right up against your scalp.

You try to press onward, keep your teeth from scraping against his skin. His dick twitches against your tongue, and you can _feel_ the veins.

This is _definitely_ better than attempting to go down on your dildo. You thought that might help, if you ever had a partner with a human dick, but it was always so plastic-y and you much preferred it inside you, anyways - it got the job done, that’s for sure.

He really likes it when you pull off and lick down the underside, you can tell by the way his fingers clench in your hair. The look on his face is adorable, his eyes rolling back and his mouth wide open and your name spilling out on repeat. You kind of want to kiss him, so you pull away and do that.

“ _M’really gonna_ ,” he says, and you smile down at him, stroking faster, your spit and what remains of the lube making it easier on the both of you. You trail your other hand down his chest, thumb over his nipple, and that’s exactly what makes him lose it. He throws his head back, nearly hitting the bedframe, crying out wordlessly as he spills over your hand. His hips rut up into your fist, cock pulsing, and then he slumps down, going completely limp, a blissed-out look on his face. 

‘Wrecked’ is the best way to describe it, his messy hair and briefs dangling off one ankle, his whole body slightly shaking, cum on his stomach (and your hand.) You lick a little off, and gag at the taste. Clearly he needs to be eating better! You are going to get _that_ fixed stat.

“Holy _shit_ ,” Dave says, when he quits shuddering. “Wow. Holy fuck.”

“Did I do good?” you ask, your tail swiping across the sheets, back and forth and back and forth. You already know you did, but you really wanna hear him say it.

You like a little praise here and there!

“Yes. Fuck, yes. Absolutely, holy crap.” He drags a hand down his face, and you laugh. “Now, you gonna let me get you off?”

“Mhm!” You rise to your knees, so you’re not sitting, and drag a finger across the hem of your panties. You thank past-Jade for choosing to wear black over your usual Squiddle-themed ones. “I’m _really_ wet, Dave, you should see it. All ‘cause of you.”

He shudders, a little. “You _can’t_ say things like that, my dick is not up for getting up, if you know what I mean. Don’t even know what I’d do for that, but you just yanked a fucking seismic orgasm out of me, I don’t think I can go for seconds.”

“I don’t think you even have condoms,” you say.

“Uh. Yeah, no, I don’t. Should I buy some?”

You take 0000.1 seconds to mull that over. “Yes. Probably a lot of them, I think.”

“Down, girl.”

“Hey, they’re not just for you! I think I’d like to fuck you, sometime.”

Dave visibly swallows at that. “Really?”

“Definitely! If you’re up for that, obviously.” You pause. As great as this conversation is, you are REALLY turned on and if Dave does not do something about that in the next thirty seconds you are going to yank these panties down, teleport your dildo in here, and fuck yourself on it like it’s him instead. “Are you gonna get over here, or am I going to have to take care of this myself?”

He scrambles over there nigh-instantly.

His hands splay across your waist, and he swallows, his red eyes meeting yours. “This cool? Can I take these off?”

“ _Yes_!” you say, a bit snappy, because this is ridiculous. “I’m basically a swamp down there, Dave, I want you to get me out of what remains of my clothes ASAP. And I want you to touch me. I don’t care how, but I want your hands or tongue or whatever _stat_!”

Dave blinks at the brusqueness in your voice. “Yes ma’am.”

He does, in fact, pull your panties down, and pushes you down onto the bed, his hands on your thighs. He seems very appreciative of said thighs, and your hips, too! Good, because you happen to like your thighs and hips. He presses his knee between your thighs, but you think that’s an accident - even though the barely-there feeling is nice, he pulls away and spreads your legs apart, tilting his head.

Oh, shit, you didn’t even think about this part! What if he’s got no idea what to do? Clearly you know what to do with a dick, but that’s pretty easy - you just touch it. Your parts are definitely more complicated. What if he doesn’t even know what a clitoris is??

“Um, Dave?”

He startles at that. “No, no, m’good, just looking. Uh, you’ve got a nice vagina? I dunno what to say. I mean, you do, it’s very nice! A+ vagina, would happily stick my dick in there. I just - m’gonna be real, you never really see vaginas in porn. Not that I watch much porn. It’s - actually, gonna save that talk for later, we really don’t need to have it right now.”

“Can you shut up and get me off?”

Dave’s face turns a nice shade of pink. “Oh, um. Yes. I can.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude -”

“No, I kinda - uh. I like it. Just, tell me what to do? I’ll do that.”

You grab his hand from your thigh and lead it between them, carefully putting his finger over your clit. You let out a shaky gasp the second he makes contact, and his brow furrows. You guess he gets the idea, because he spreads your folds and starts going at it.

It feels a bit weird, having someone who’s _not_ you touch you like that. He’s working his fingers over your clit with ease, given how wet you are. You sigh, lean back and just… watch. And it’s nice! You start rutting down against his fingers, your skin prickling when he presses firmer. He seems to get the idea you like that, and hoists up one of your legs so it’s dangling over the crook of his arm to get a better angle. You don’t know where he learned THAT move, but it works, and you tilt your face to the side, gasping out a little at the feeling.

You’re sensitive, and Dave’s a fast learner. He’s playing you like his DJ equipment, with nimble fingers and tiny, circular strokes that get your toes curling.

It’s just… not quite enough.

“Could you, um, put some fingers in me?”

He doesn’t say anything, he just does - you feel a finger prodding at your entrance, and it slips inside easily. He pulls it back out, and then two press inside of you, and you try to spread your legs wider to accommodate but you don’t really need to. He thrusts his fingers inside of you, setting up a nice rhythm that matches his thumb against your clit. He kisses you, too, trails his tongue between your lips and then down your jaw, leaving a stripe of wet across your neck and making his way to your tits. His mouth wraps around one of your nipples, and your hips jolt up.

You feel hot and dizzy all over, but you really, really want more.

You don’t even say anything before he’s moving back, laying down on the bed and shoving his face between your thighs. He doesn’t even ask, he just does it, which is nice. Your legs drape over his shoulders, hand in his hair, and he lets out a hum against your clit that makes your tongue loll. He laps his tongue like a cat, dragging it down towards your opening and right back up, flicking his tongue at hood of your nub, enclosing his mouth over you and sucking. Your hips grind up, and you finally understand the whole ‘face-fucking’ thing ‘cause you REALLY want to fuck his face right now.

Your fingers dig into his scalp, legs quaking. You bite down on your lip, trying to stifle the noises pouring from your own mouth. You’re squirming against him, but he doesn’t seem to mind at all. 

Dave sinks his fingers back into you, drawing them back out and then pushing back in, and he’s definitely not as good as you are at fingering (you know your body very well) but it feels _wonderful_. 

You’re also incredibly turned on and really close and you can feel the pressure building up in the pit of your stomach, ready to pop like mentos and a coke bottle, and you don’t think he could do anything wrong at this rate.

Even if he’s a bit subpar on the fingering side of things, his mouth?? YES. Holy shit, YES! 

It’s too much, way too much.

Your legs twitch, your body goes furnace-hot, and you grind hard against his face, that pressure releasing, your vision snapping white for a half second, calling out Dave’s name like a prayer up towards heaven. You don’t stop shaking for a few seconds, your body drooping against the bed, all spread out as one of your legs thuds back onto the sheets.

He doesn’t let up, though.

You’re tearing up just from the overstimulation, between his mouth sucking at you and his fingers inside of you and the feeling of his head between your thighs and the weight and, oh GOD.

Within a few moments he’s coaxed _another_ orgasm out of you - you’re shaking so hard, gasping out his name, writhing against the sheets and scrambling your hands at his shoulders to pull him off of you.

“Dave!” you cry out, and “ _stopstopstoptoomuch_!!!!” comes out right after, and Dave pulls away with a very satisfied look on his face, wiping cum off his mouth and chin.

You immediately make serotonin-filled grabby-hands, trying to get him over towards you, and when he collapses next to you, a sweaty cum-covered mess (just like you!) you don’t care at all.

You wind up with your head on his shoulder, one arm splayed over his chest, and just listen to the sound of him breathing, his heartbeat heavy, his hands in your hair, playing with the dark strands.

A girl could really get used to this.

You think you’re going to.

“So,” you say, after a few blissfully quiet moments. “Are making _this_ a thing?”

“We’re doin’ this, man. We’re making it happen,” says Dave, and he twirls a strand of your hair around his fingers. “I mean. If you want to. I’m basically the antithesis of the word ‘suave’, and I’m probably shit with real proper flirtation, doubt I can really get all _en fuego_ with the whole sex thing, never gone on a date, wouldn’t even know where the fuck to begin, but -”

“I _do_ want to date you!” you say, cutting off his ramble by putting your hand over his mouth. “I don’t care if you’re not suave. If you haven’t noticed, I’ve lived with you for two and a half years, I am well aware of that. And I don’t care if you’re bad at flirting, we’re way past that. I’m not even sure what ‘en fuego’ means -”

“Performing well,” says Dave, clearing his throat.

“Well, _you_ performed just fine a few minutes ago. And even if you hadn’t, it’s not that hard to figure out what I like and don’t like. Because, spoiler alert! I like you.”

His face reddens a bit. “Oh. Uh. Thanks, I like you too. Give me a gold star for trying my best at shoving my face between your thighs, I’ll put it right alongside my non-existent kiddie camper handysash. We can consider it the ‘tried his darndest to get Jade off, and surprisingly succeeded on the first go, somehow’ award.”

“I was _really_ horny! It’s not THAT hard to get me off!” You giggle at that, but you have more pressing issues. Damn Dave and his lack of self-confidence - you don’t have time to convince you that he deserves you, or whatever silly thing he’s getting at. “And, just so you know, I’ve never really gone on a date either, but it looks pretty simple. You just go do something with someone, and also kiss them and hold their hand the whole time, right?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“Okay, then we’re good!”

But… there’s just one issue. 

“Wouldn’t it... change everything with Karkat and Terezi? I mean...”

Dave blinks at you for a moment, then seems to get what you mean. After all, you live with the two of them - and you two pairing up would probably make things awkward! They’d probably be grossed out by your displays of affection.

And… they’d probably feel a little left out, wouldn’t they?

“You’ve got a point,” he says, after mulling it over for a second, and he sighs. “Okay, y’know how in those shitty coming-of-age movies, the guy and his love interest always end up sneaking around for a bit ‘cause they don’t want their parents to find out? That’s us, and Karkat and Terezi are the parents. Except, not literally. But also sort of literally, given they created Earth, which made us pop into existence.”

“Um, don’t they tend to get caught sneaking out?”

“Hey, we’re way smarter than two fictional teens. We already hang out a lot, nobody’s going to question that.” He pauses, his hand running through your hair in the meantime. It’s nice. He’s even playing with your ears. “God, this idea’s stupid.”

“It’s not THAT stupid. You’ve got the right idea!”

Well, what do you know? You’re eighteen (and a few months), and have never actually dated anyone. You and Davesprite almost dated, and you kissed Davepetasprite^2 that one time (sometimes you wonder what happened to them.) You have no experience with relationships, and you don’t think Dave has much experience with them, either, unless he’s been hiding a secret relationship from you.

Hahaha, sort of like you’re discussing right now.

Dave gives you a look. “Do I, though?”

“Yes! Except, maybe we don’t really, _sneak_ around? We just keep it on the downlow, let them figure it out or tell them when we’re ready!” God, how did you get to this conversation? “Although, honestly, sneaking around sounds like lots of fun. That’s silly, isn’t it?”

“Really silly, but I’m not judging. I feel like judging someone I just made out with and, uh, got to third base with, would be a bad idea.”

It takes a minute to realize ‘third base’ is not a sports reference. “Yes, Dave, fondling my boobs and letting me jerk you off and _then_ judging me would be a very bad idea.”

“Figures,” he says, moving so he’s on his stomach, and laughs a little, propping himself up on his elbows. “S’not that I don’t _want_ them to know - I mean, you think I wouldn’t wanna tell the entire fucking world I’m gonna get to smooch Jade Harley on a regular basis, get a heaping dose of this cuddling shit in potentially daily? Please, it’s the fucking inverse, really. I wanna shout it from the rooftops like some bitchy dunkass stuck in a romance flick. Babe, the world is _your_ oyster, the rest of us are just livin’ in it.”

“I don’t really like oysters,” you say, sleepily. “But I do love you.”

His soft reply tells you all you need to know.

“I love you, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can i just say that the smut in this chapter is some of the best i've ever written? because it is.


	2. karkat.

Holy mother of fuck, you hate the Troll Kingdom government.

Okay, sure, you GET that it’s hard to run a government filled with nook-wiping idiots, as the people running your kingdom CLEARLY ARE, but you’re Karkat Vantas. You’re literally one of four rulers, and also the most predisposed to actually being a part of said government. You are their administrative god, their fucking managerial ruler, king of organization, and you will not stand for these shitty bilgesacks fuck over your job with their ridiculously overdone paperwork. You are NOT going to stamp your seal of approval over their third bill to condense jobs or lower minimum wage or whatever the hell they think they can get past you.

You just aren’t.

Your office cubicle is a shitty piece of work. You deserve your own gogdamn office. You’re tired of smelling everyone’s highlighters while they lick their envelopes and gossip about Rhonda from HR and her new matesprit and drink coffee that tastes like someone’s unwashed feet.

You HATE working here so much that you’d be better off quitting and fucking yourself up the wastechute with your stapler, but then they’d lose their best worker, and then the entire kingdom would fall apart without your voice of reason keeping them sane.

You push your chair back, the squeak of the wheels blasting right down your eardrums, and get up to get yourself more coffee. You have less than an hour before you can leave. You started working here a month ago. Between Terezi going to ‘law school’, Strider working on his crapshoot music, and Jade making a mess of your backyard as she attempts to turn it into a garden, you were getting really fucking bored hanging around your hive while everyone else did their own little things.

It’d be nice if you didn’t sleep in so late, too, but so does Terezi. Hell, the entire Troll Kingdom is more on the nocturnal side of things. So, now, five hours a day is spent at this office, where you’re getting paid to sit around and do nothing, instead of sitting around and doing nothing at hive and NOT getting paid!

It’s a fucking fantastic deal.

The only thing keeping you sane is messaging Terezi when you have a few moments of peace and quiet from going over bills, and also the knowledge that you’re getting pizza when you get home. Dave and Jade leave the hive a lot to go do their dumb human things, like shopping for groceries and making music with Rose and John.

Those two are _basically_ moirails, even if they refuse to call themselves that. But you know. You’re not blind. ‘Best friends’ doesn’t account for how the two of them just drape over each other like exhausted, slinky purrbeasts, papping awkwardly at each other with their blunt hands.

CG: ARE YOU STILL WANTING TO HAVE PIZZA?  
GC: K4RK4T, K4RK4T, K4RK4T  
GC: DO 1 3V3R *NOT* W4NT SOM3 N1C3, CH33S3-COV3R3D, CRUSTY M34TY S4UCY P1ZZ4???  
GC: YOU WOUND M3 W1TH YOUR HORR1F1C 4SSUMPT1ONS  
CG: ALL I DID WAS ASK YOU A FUCKING QUESTION.  
CG: IT’S VERY SIMPLE TO ANSWER. IT’S A YES OR NO QUESTION.  
GC: 4S MUCH 4S S331NG YOUR D3L1GHTFUL GR4Y W4LLS OF T3XT ON MY SCR33N R34LLY G3TS M3 GO1NG, 1 TH1NK 1 4M GO1NG TO CUT YOU OFF R1GHT TH3R3  
CG: YOU ASSUME I WAS GOING TO SEND YOU A WALL OF TEXT.   
CG: UGH. WHAT MADE ME THINK MESSAGING YOU WAS A GOOD IDEA??  
CG: I JUST WANTED TO KNOW IF YOU STILL WANTED SOME FUCKING PIZZA  
GC: P3RH4PS 4 MOV13, TO GO W1TH TH1S P1ZZ4?  
GC: OR 1S TH4T TOO P3RV3RS3 FOR YOUR ROM4NT1C4LLY-1NCL1N3D M1ND  
CG: I HATE YOU SO FUCKING MUCH.  
GC: HOW H4T3M4NT1C. 1'M SWOON1NG!!  
GC: YOU R34LLY KNOW 4 W4Y TO 4 G1RL'S H34RT, K4RK4T, 1'M 1MPR3SS3D

Your boss comes on by to make sure you’re actually ‘working’ and not ‘goofing around’, and by the time you look back at your husktop to reply, Terezi’s gone offline, so you’re bordering on losing your mind and checking into an asylum for the governmentally challenged, but you deal with it. You consider putting an elastic band on your wrist and snapping it, but that seems a bit masochistic even for you.

It’s just work. You’re the one who chose this job. And, although you’d never admit it to your roommates, you like the dull, steady pace. Hell, you have a hard time admitting it yourself.

And the next forty seven minutes pass in a bleary drain of time, every fucking inch pouring right out of your mouth in a several minute long groan as you bang your head on the nearest flat object. Okay, not really, but by Sufferer’s chin-high pants _do you want to_.

You also want to chuck your coffee cup at your cubicle-neighbor.

But you don’t do that, either.

By the time you ACTUALLY shuffle home, gritting your teeth and groaning through them, your head lower than a kicked barkbeast, your entire body is stiff and achy and you consider calling up your workplace and going ‘Hey, sorry for the short notice - NOT - but I’m not coming in tomorrow. Or ever again. You can take your paperwork and shove it right up your wastechute, because I QUIT.’

You collapse on the couch, pushing off two entire pillows, bemoaning your very existence, when there’s a thud of noise and suddenly Terezi is staring down at you. Well, you would say staring if she could actually SEE, but given she can’t see for shit, it’s more that she’s looking in your general direction. You’d bet boonbucks she sniffed you right over here, in your despair and misery.

“What the fuck?” you grumble.

“Nuh-uh-uh,” says Terezi, vaulting over the couch to plop down next to you. She lands right on your feet, and you curse under your breath. _Shitcrisping mother of all that’s fucking holy._ “Bad day at the office, Karkat? You smell like pure, hopeless _defeat_. Like someone burned a nice cherry pie, and smathered the remains across your face.”

Her vomit-inducing words do nothing to soothe your wounded ego, or whatever the hell remains of it. “Listen, Terezi, I’m not really up for this right now. Go be a manic pixie dream girl somewhere else, and solve someone else’s fucking problems.”

“I don’t even have a clue what that is,” she says, and pouts at you, her brows lowering. “I am neither manic nor a pixie nor much of a girl.”

“It’s movie terminology. For romcoms. The pretty, enthusiastic human girl with weird interests who forces her way into some poor, disgruntled soul’s life and shoves her shitty, uninspired self at him until he changes his ways and inevitably leaves her behind, mourning what could’ve been if she weren’t so fucking _flighty_. What an insipid fucker.”

“You used two seperate synonyms for ‘flavorless’ in there,” Terezi says, and raises her eyebrows. Her vivid, searingly red eyes look right at you, and you’d think she was judging your pitiful appearance if you didn’t know any better. “I’m proud of you, you got a dictionary!”

“Fuck you.”

She gives you that cackle-giggle you hate so much. “I’m sorry, I’m not really up for pailing right now. Try again after the ding.”

Your face heats up like you shoved it in the microwave for a good fifteen minutes and then blew your face off. Fucking wonderful. You’ve spent the past few sweeps dancing around your feelings for Terezi Pyrope, after your idiotic past self decided that he couldn’t have it one way, he wanted her in every quadrant like a deranged lunatic.

If you could go back in time and strangle yourself, you would.

She’s not yours to have. She never has been. Terezi Pyrope does not belong to you, and she’s never going to.

You roll over, trying to ignore her, but given she’s currently sitting on your fucking feet, that’s hard to do. The quilt on the back of the couch falls off and hits you right in the face, and you shove it off of you with flying hands and ridiculously slow reflexes.

You REALLY need to pick strifing back up.

“My point is,” you grumble, because of course you have a point, “that I don’t want to deal with your shit right now. Go bother Dave or Jade or something, I’m sure THEY would be happy to get slimed in your nonsense.”

“No can do! Jade and Dave both went to help Rose and Kanaya move some furniture around their hive. You are stuck with little ol’ me until _I_ decide I want to go do something else, and honestly, from my perspective, that seems like a long ways away. I think I’ll stay right here, and maybe watch some TV. How does the news channel sound? All that colorful dismay sure is fun to listen to.”

Ugh. Okay, real question - what was past you from about ten minutes ago thinking when that dumbass decided he wanted to lay down on the couch after he stumbled home, exhausted and ridiculously close to quitting? You were an idiot. Past Karkat was an idiot, and you want to punch him.

Not as badly as you wanted to punch your past self back on the meteor, or during the game, but you’re pissed off that you didn’t even CONSIDER Terezi would decide to come bother you the moment you got home.

“I’m hungry,” you say. “Can we order this damn pizza already?”

“Oh, absolutely.” Terezi draws out the word real nice and long. “I think I want some pineapple on it. I hear pineapple tastes great on pizza.”

“You say that every single time. And then you hate it. And you pick all the pieces off, and it leaves those ridiculous imprints behind, where the cheese got flattened by that stupid yellow fruit. Whatever human invented that deserves a harsh and painful death by strangulation. Why the fuck would any sane person put that on pizza?”

“Wow, you’re being incredibly rude to the pizza! I am quite sure that whatever human created pineapple never even considered your opinion. Also, I don’t think humans created fruit, they found it and then grew more of it.”

“I don’t care what you think! It’s stupid.”

“Were I not feeling kind today, I would fine you for that, and take you right to human fruit-jail, where you would spend the night sitting beside several pineapples before arraignment come morning.” She grins, showing off her rows of needle-sharp teeth, and finally she relieves the crushing pressure of her body sitting on your legs and climbs off of you, pulling her palmhusk out of her pocket and bringing up your favorite pizza restaurant.

Well, you say ‘favorite’, but it’s the only place within a 10 mile radius that delivers AND has beefgrub on the menu. Although ‘beefgrub’ is subjective, given no such thing exists on this overrated planet. They just have ‘beef.’

You listen to her place the order and stretch out your legs, which feel like you’ve been shoving needles (or Terezi’s teeth) in them. You sit up, stretch your arms while you’re at it, and fix your shirt. It’s not even a comfortable shirt. You have to wear a button-down shirt with a collar. A fucking COLLAR. You feel like you’re choking 24/7.

So you head into your room while you wait for the pizza to arrive. You toss your bag of shit onto your bed - made neatly, as always, with everything tucked in. Your favorite movie posters greet you, Adam Sandler’s eyes glaring right into your face as you yank off your shirt and change out of your slacks, shrugging on a sweater and sweatpants. Literally anything is better than that atrocious garb you have to wear for work.

The _sole_ good thing about your work outfit is that you don’t have to display your caste or sign across your chest like some mangy animal wearing a collar that doesn’t suit them right. There is absolutely no mutant candy-red in your closet, and for that, you’re thankful.

You even tidy up your room a bit while you’re at it, putting your clothes in the laundry bin. You’re in charge of the laundry on a nigh-daily basis, from sorting clothes into color piles to tossing dirty towels into the washing machine and pouring way too much detergent in there.

You, luckily, are not in charge of cleaning other people’s rooms. You’ve seen them, and you don’t WANT to. Dave’s is a mess, with cords on the floor and pictures strung to the walls and the occasional article of clothing on the floor, the drawers on his nightstand always pulled out a bit - sometimes he leaves his fucking hangers on his unmade bed, and you want to strangle him, but it’s not your room. Jade’s is nicer, a bit more tidy, and she tends to keep her bed made and her clothing off the ground, but there’s too many fucking plants on her sill, and those handmade origami lights that she spent the past few weeks making and stringing up always catch on your horns if you duck in there. And you can’t even get started on Terezi’s, with all her scalemates hanging from the ceiling or their heads chopped off and fuzz everywhere, her books for school stacked up in haphazard piles of bland, ugly colors, each wall badly painted a different color.

Your room is a _lot_ fucking nicer, enough said.

You exit your room when the pizza arrives, picking yourself up from where you’re laying face-down on the floor and heading into the living room. Terezi’s paying, taking the pizza box and opening it to take a whiff. She closes the box and fucking licks it, before nodding at the poor delivery guy and grabbing some cheese packets from him.

She swivels towards you, striding over with the pizza box and setting it down on the coffee table, pushing a few magazines and books right onto the ground. You open the box and take a peek inside.

Of course half is covered in pineapple. Of fucking course it is.

But your beefgrub-and-beetle pizza looks great, even if there’s a few chunks of pineapple hanging onto your cheese when you grab a slice. It’s hot, when you bite into it, watching Terezi scatter the contents of two entire packets of powder-y cheese onto her pizza. Of course she licks it, before grumbling about pineapple, picking a few pieces off.

Every. Fucking. Time.

“I told you so,” you say.

She laughs at you. “I did it just to spite you!”

“Are you really spiting me if you’re not even fucking eating the thing?”

“Yes,” she says, and grins at you.

* * *

Your other two roommates return around nine-ish, Dave carrying a container of donuts, Jade leaning towards him and chattering about ‘drought resistant plants’ and ‘xeriscaping’, two things you absolutely DO NOT understand. He drapes one arm over the back of the couch, looking down at you and Terezi with a blank expression, offering you the box. You snatch it from him, popping open the lid to find eight of them, sitting pretty. Aha, one cinnamon and one glazed with jelly - they know you surprisingly fucking well. You snatch out the cinnamon and shove it right into your mouth. It’s still slightly warm.

Dave snickers at you, his blank expression faltering. “Don’t eat all the glazed ones, ‘kay?”

Terezi sticks her tongue out at him. “I think I will have all of the glazed donuts I want, coolkid.” She grabs the box out of your hand, opening it and taking a big whiff. “And it looks like there are three!”

“That nickname got old like, five entire years ago,” Dave says, then reaches down to grab a chocolate-glazed donut before Terezi can get to it. You watch him pick off a bit of the icing. “I’m just kiddin’, those are all for you two.”

“Why the fuck did you go to Krispy Kreme? I thought you were out helping Rose and Kanaya move into their new hive.” If anything, you expected Dave to bring home some more scalding leaf fluid - well, tea, but it usually burns your damn mouth if you drink it.

Dave’s mouth does that stupid dimple-smile thing. You hate it so fucking much that it’s ridiculous, because it makes no sense how they disappear into his skin like that. At least Terezi’s are out all the time. “They live right by a donut shop, dude. We saw they were giving away free ones, and me and Jade hopped on over there to get coffee and donuts and talk shop. Brought you guys home some.”

“Why?” says Terezi, her brows furrowed.

“Because you’re my friends? Jeez, do I have to give reasoning to everythin’ I do? Can’t a guy just buy donuts for his roomies, his two besties, two out of several of the most important people in his life?”

“No. Clearly you have an ulterior motive, and are bribing us with these donuts.”

“Oh, no, he’s serious,” says Jade, and you almost forgot she was over there. She’s putting on some chapstick. “Well, technically it was my idea! I thought you guys would like having some donuts, I know we got home a bit late and it’s probably late for dessert… but, you both deserve it!”

“Why?” asks Terezi, for the second time in a row.

“Shut your blistering squawk box,” you say, and nudge at her with your foot. “Don’t look a gift hoofbeast in the mouth, just eat your damn donuts before they get cold and you end up shovelling them into the trash.”

“He’s got a point,” says Dave, still snickering as he turns away, stretching one arm up and yawning. He pulls off his hoodie and tosses it onto the armchair - it’s the middle of April! Why the fuck does he have a jacket on? You’ll never understand humans. “M’tired, so y’all have fun. G’night.”

There’s a flash of light, and Jade appears on the armchair, pushing Dave’s hoodie onto the back of it. “Night, Dave! Get some sleep,” she says, and turns towards the two of you with her fingers steepled. “So, I have something I want to ask you two - what would you think about -”

“No,” you say.

“You haven’t even heard what I’m trying to say!” Jade pouts at you, with that wide-eyed look that makes her face look like she’s emulating a barkbeast even worse than she already is. Attempting to, at least. “I was thinking, we could put some pumpkins in the backyard, and maybe grow some?”

“Pumpkins?”

“Yes, Karkat, pumpkins. You know, those big orange squashes with the green vines? Technically a pumpkin is a squash, so it’s a vegetable, but have you ever had pumpkin pie? Or pumpkin bread? Or pumpkin muffins? Ooh, we could cook pumpkin pancakes!”

“I know what a fucking pumpkin is,” you say, and Terezi laughs so hard she smacks you with the donut box. “Are they an invasive species? Are they going to destroy your entire vegetable patch? Or our entire fucking yard?”

“Jeez. No! I’ve grown them before,” Jade says, swinging her legs over the side of the armchair. You think she hangs around Dave too much, because he’s always doing that, too. “And I still have some growing on LOFAF! I go up there and check in on them sometimes. The rest of my garden’s kinda dead, but -”

You cut her off with a wave of your hand. “Yeah, yeah, your garden’s dead, boo-hoo. I don’t see what your point is. Why do we want pumpkins?”

“Because they’re tasty and orange and smell good,” Terezi says, and sets the box of donuts down on the coffee table. “And, as Jade said, they make wonderful pies. I think it’s a good idea, you have my seal of approval, Ms. Harley.”

“Why thank you, Legislacerator Pyrope.” Jade pronounces ‘legislacerator’ with all the grace of a wiggler learning Alternian for the first time, but at least she’s enthusiastic about it, unlike some other humans you could easily name. Cough cough, John, cough cough. “I have Dave’s okay, too, but I want to have everyone’s before I introduce another plant to our garden.”

“ _Your_ garden.” You’re rolling your eyes.

“Okay, sure, _my_ garden. But you get my point, right?”

You groan. “Fine. Plant some pumpkins.”

“Sweet! Now, I’m sleepy,” and she punctuates that with a yawn, “so I am going to head to bed. Love you guys! Don’t stay up to sleep, and make sure to drink water with all that sugar, or you’ll get sick, Karkat.”

You KNOW she’s right, which is the worst part. She’s always up in your grill and acting like she’s your lusus, remembering things about you that you really wish she didn’t. Like how you get a stomach ache if you eat too much sugar without drinking something along with it.

She’s definitely a far cry from Terezi, who’s loud and obnoxious and who has a mouth that you desperately want to punch and kiss all at once. And she’s definitely not like Dave, who’s your best friend and digs into your guts in ways that you wish you could ignore.

But you groan, even though you’re thankful for the reminder. “Good night.”

She smiles at you, and disappears in a spark of green. You hear a _bang!_ from upstairs, and an “I’m okay!” yelled down at you in Jade’s dulcet tones. Terezi laughs at that, curled a little with how she sits, grabbing at the remote to turn the TV back on.

You sit, seething in silence, while Terezi flicks through channel after channel after channel after mindlessly boring channel. She can’t even actually see it, and you’ve never understood why the hell she sits around watching stupid shows like the backlog for human _Law and Order_ (Troll _Law and Order_ had a shit-ton more culling) or other dumb shows about crime and lawyers and shit that makes you want to go take a dive off the gander precipice and fall to uncertain doom in the bushes below.

“Why the fuck are you watching this shit? We’d all be better off watching paint dry with how gogdamn boring this is.”

Terezi laughs raucously, the high-pitched noise a drain on your ears. You almost plug them up with your fingers. She sounds like someone left the disposal on, and shoved a repulsively large amount of silverware up in there. “Sounds like someone is jealous I’m not paying attention to him! Don’t worry, Karkat, I’m not ignoring your ever-lovely presence.” She sticks her cold foot against your knee, and you hiss at her, which just spurns on even _more_ laughing.

“Please. If I wanted your attention, I’d fucking get it.”

“You don’t have to punctuate your words with soooo many curses, you know,” says Terezi, wiggling her fingers at you. “As large as your arsenal may be, with things like ‘bilgefuck’ and ‘crotchblustering’ and ‘shitwiff’, I, personally, think it would be nice if you would tone it down just a little bit while I watch my shows.”

“They’re not even your shows! That makes no sense! You can’t even see!”

Terezi giggles, moving her feet off of you, putting them up over the couch so she’s hanging off, her hair curling against the cushions. “As despicable as your reminder of my lack of sight may be, I will let it slide for now.”

You make a disgruntled noise, getting to your feet. You have better things to do than watch the same episodes of some stupid cop show over and over again while Terezi tosses popcorn at the screen. Popcorn she never fucking cleans up. You’re sure there’s still kernels beneath the stand, waiting to pop the moment you finally get tired of cleaning up after her and blow up this entire hive.

You’d never actually do that.

You head into the kitchen, grab a glass of water, and down it, before heading upstairs to use the load gaper, maybe take a nice hot shower and scrub your hair and peel off some dead skin. You might actually go to bed early. Usually, you’re up until one or two in the morning, but honestly, you’re really shitting tired.

Work does that to you, you guess, as stupid as it is.

You’re halfway down the hall when you hear noises from Dave’s room. Music, a couple of volumes too loud for you to have a nice shower and fucking concentrate on your thoughts. Jeez, didn’t he say he was going to sleep? He’s going to wake up Jade. Sure, she’s a heavy sleeper, but that’s ridiculous.

So you walk over and force open the door, your mouth open and ready to shout.

That’s your first mistake.

Dave’s half-undressed (he’s only in his dumb heart-covered underwear), and this wouldn’t really be a problem if not for the fact that _Jade is also right there_ , _on top of him._ They’re making out, humping at each other - and the bed - like they haven’t even noticed you’re there.

Except that they HAVE, and that’s your second mistake, because you’ve closed the door and left the second you opened it. Instead, you’re standing there, your mouth agape, and you scramble back, trying for the handle to try and force the thing closed.

What. The. FUCK.

You may have screamed. There’s a thud from downstairs.

You do, in fact, manage to slam the door shut, and you can hear Dave cussing on the other side, hear movement and something getting knocked over. The door swings open, and you’re standing there, frozen and statue-still. At least he’s wearing pants, but they’re also inside-out. His hair’s a fucking mess, sticking up at the back, and there’s lipgloss on his cheeks and jaw.

“Holy shit, do you not know how to knock?” he says, and his voice is strained, a hand running through his hair. His face is incredibly red - you’ve seen him flustered before, but that and the sweat and… yep, he and Jade were in the throes of nearly pailing when you fucking walked in on them. Or maybe they were just getting their sloppy human makeouts on. You’re not sure.

Your own face is similarly red.

“Why - I - are you some thinkpanless idiot? Why the hell were you -”

Dave covers his face. Jade’s teleported over, a few sparks of green surrounding her. She shakes them off. Luckily, she’s partially dressed, too, wearing Dave’s t-shirt and her skirt.

The music’s still playing from Dave’s room, the sole reason that you opened his door in the first place. What the fuck were you thinking? You ALWAYS knock! But - he - holy fucking Dolorosa, you have literally no words for this. Dave and Jade were clearly about to fucking _pail_.

God. You’re such an idiot. You really wish you had Dave’s turntables, so you could go and stop yourself from being so stupid and coming up here in the first place, as paradoxical as that would be. At least you could remove the imagery of Jade’s underwear out of your thinkpan. You wonder if you could scrape it out with some bleach.

Jade sighs, snaps, and everything goes white for a second before all three of you appear in the living room. You stumble back and almost hit the television stand.

“What happened?” Terezi asks, from where she’s sitting on the couch, and takes a bite of her donut, her brows raised.

You point at Jade and Dave, who both look really embarrassed about this entire situation. Good riddance! They should be! “ _They_ were _making out_!”

Jade lets out a very heavy sigh. “We were, um, actually, we were about to have sex, but, Karkat decided to open our bedroom door.”

Well, THAT proves it. You really did walk in on their disgusting foreplay. Gog! You’re so fucking stupid!

“Your music was too loud! It was going to fucking shatter my eardrums!”

“No, it wasn’t!” Jade glares at you, and you’re taken aback for a second. “You just couldn’t leave us alone, or even bother knocking! Ugh.” She drags her hand down her face - you realize she’s not wearing her glasses. “I guess this is as good a time as any to tell them!”

Dave’s face turns redder. “Oh. Uh. Yeah.”

“We’re, well.” Jade reaches over, takes Dave’s hand, and she grins at the two of you for a moment before her smile falters at the look on your face. “We’ve been, um, sort of dating since February. Surprise!”

They’ve...

 _What_?

It takes you a second to realize that means they’ve been _matesprits_ for _almost three fucking perigrees_ without telling you. They’ve been having an entire fucking relationship behind your back??

HOLY SHIT.

“Wait, you had no idea?” Terezi turns her head towards you, taking yet another bite of her donut - and now it’s gone, so you don’t have to watch her chew. “Oh, I thought we all knew and just weren’t saying anything to let you ride out an embarrassment free honeymoon period.”

Dave opens his mouth, then closes it, then opens it again, before settling down on the couch, burying his face in his hands. “Hold up, you knew we were dating, and didn’t say anything?”

“Well, duh. I could smell Jade all over you, _way_ more than usual.” Terezi shrugs. “And _you_ are not exactly subtle when you play 'footsie' under the table.”

“So,” you say, your voice sharp, “the two of you just - _why didn’t you say something?_ ”

“Um,” says Jade, her feet shuffling against the wooden floor, “well, I’ll be honest, we meant to! Honestly, it was just nice to not say anything for a little bit. It’s barely been three months, we weren’t _really_ sneaking around or anything. I mean, the sneaking-around was fun. There just never really seemed like a good time to go ‘hey guys! You know how we’re all good friends who live together and spend a lot of time with each other and don’t really have much in the way of outside relationships? Well, see, Dave and I have completely changed that dynamic! Guess what, we’re dating!’”

You guess you can see her point. She and Dave have always clustered together a bit. You’ve seen how they lean on each other for support - you were so convinced they were moirails, up until now!

But apparently you were off an entire fucking _quadrant_.

“We were just trying to have fun, and we were planning to tell you guys soon, anyhow.”

Jade’s ears are drooping down, and you let out a sigh, sitting down on the armchair, and cover your face with your hands, giving a muffled scream, before you shove your hands into your pockets.

“And you thought we wouldn’t get it?”

“Well, no… s’just. Look. It’s my fault,” Dave mumbles, scratching at the side of his face. “I didn’t want all this to change, and now that y’all know, it’s going to. You’re both going to start treating us differently, and avoiding us to give us space, and -”

“Jegus Christ,” you say. “Do you really think we’d do that?”

“Well, when was the last time you ever really talked to Kanaya?”

You frown, thinking back. Okay, he has a point, it HAS been a while. “She’s busy with Rose! They just bought a house!”

“Exactly! I mean, we live here, if we -”

Jade cuts Dave off with her hand over his mouth. “Look, we shouldn’t have hid it from you guys! You’re our friends. We care about you both a LOT, and it doesn’t change that we want to live here, with the two of you! But we… we really didn’t want things to change… and y’know how anti-confrontational Dave gets, look at him now!”

She actually giggles at that. Straight-up _giggles_. Dave looks a bit annoyed at her words, but settles down when she takes his hand again - you guess, maybe, they are still a bit on the pale side.

“It was inevitable at least two of us would eventually pair up,” says Terezi brightly, and you glare at her. “I mean it! Although, I thought it would be Dave and Karkat.”

Your face heats up just as much as Dave’s face reddens, and you stammer out a “what the fuck” at the same time as Dave goes “no _fucking_ way”, and rubs at the back of his neck, fidgeting a little.

Terezi sighs, rubbing her fingers against her temple. “My point stands! I am a Seer of Mind, remember?”

“You never godtiered,” you point out. “Does it even fucking count?”

“Yes. I am disappointed you of all people would even say that, Mr. Knight of Blood!”

“Do we have to go on this roundabout again? Every fuckin’ time,” says Dave, and shifts to the side - Jade plops down on the couch next to him, leaning against him, and you guess THAT makes sense, now that you know.

“I’m still fucking pissed that you didn’t think you could tell us,” you say, and point at both of them. “But I’m going to let you go back to whatever debauched depravities you were doing before -”

“I don’t think I want to,” mumbles Dave.

Jade elbows him. Again.

“ - and I’m going to go take my fucking shower. Turn down your gogdamn music next time, Jegus Christ.”

You push past the two of them and head upstairs and into the bathroom, turning the water on in the ablution trap and slamming the door closed.

It reverberates through the walls, but you don’t give a shit.

Back on the meteor, you pitied Dave. A lot. And you never did anything about it, because you were too fucking scared to ruin what little you had. If you did something that straddled the line between ‘platonic’ and ‘romantic’ too much, pushed too hard - he ran away, closed up, and as _much_ as you chased and tried to tear down his walls, you never got far enough to admit your feelings.

And you’ve regretted not trying harder since, but at least you have a friend. Maybe if you’d pushed more, or opened up yourself, it’d be Karkat and Dave, and not Jade and Dave.

But of course, your past self was a fucking selfish douchebag who never once considered his future self’s relationship status would be ‘single’ at nine sweeps.

And you’re not going to ruin Dave’s relationship now.

You know you’ll get over this, you’re just angry right now.

You sink down in the ablution trap and let the cold water wash away how pissed you are that your best friend didn’t think he could fess up to being in a relationship with the girl you’ve known he’s loved for sweeps, and you just don’t think at all.

* * *

“Did you know that when my doomed self told John to go fix things, she made John tell me that I didn’t need ‘him’?”

Terezi’s leaning back in her chair, hand around a paper cup of coffee.

“Yes,” you say, because you vaguely do. You remember Egbert telling you that, once upon a time. You poke a straw, hard, into your orange-banana smoothie. As much as you love this coffee place, you fucking hate their coffee. Why the _hell_ do you keep coming here? “What the fuck does that have to do coffee?”

“Oh, it doesn’t,” says Terezi, and she shrugs. “Apparently, doomed-me dated Dave, did you know _that_?”

“ _Yes_.”

She snickers, breathing in deep, propping her arms on her homework. That’s why you accompanied her here, after all - she needed a break from sitting at home and doing the aforementioned homework, and you wanted to give Dave and Jade some space.

“I never DID figure out if I meant Dave, or Gamzee, or you! That’s why Vriska and I ended up together, you know. Better her than Gamzee, I guess!”

Ughhh. You hate reminders of your wigglerhood friend. He’s currently living at the bottom of the damn ocean, or something - you’ve never asked. Kanaya took that fridge and you have no idea where the hell she put it.

“Does it even matter now? Who cares which of us it was.” You do. You care. Your near-relationship with Terezi still haunts you, even now. You’re often struck with the urge to grab her face and kiss her. You never do, obviously.

“Well, _I_ think it matters.” Terezi adjusts her glasses and takes a long drink of her coffee. “You know, I matched with this guy on Tinder, and he was highly interested in taking me out, but then he sent me a bulge pic. People like that are why we can’t have nice things! They always ruin it. Can’t I just meet a nice troll who wants to go grab a coffee, maybe talk about the weather?”

“ _Nobody_ wants to talk about the weather.”

“Well, I do! It’s always drab and dreary. A good conversation starter! ‘Oh, what do you think of the weather today?’ ‘Well, it’s the same as ever, very bleak and depressing! Don’t you _ever_ wish trolls were better suited for the sun?’ ‘Why yes, I do!’” She’s making talking motions with her hand. It’s really annoying, and honestly a bit adorable, though you’d never admit it.

During your years on the meteor, you missed this. A lot.

You groan, and crumple up your straw wrapper.

“I don’t get what you’re trying to say,” you say, because honestly, you’ve trailed off into your thoughts so hard you forgot the purpose of this conversation. Didn’t you come here for her schoolwork? Why the hell are you talking about how John told her that she didn’t need any boys in her life, or whatever it was he wrote?

“Bleh,” says Terezi, pushing aside her palmhusk to set down her coffee. “This may be hard for you to understand, Karkat, but I do not _NEED_ you to ‘get’ what I am trying to say.”

“You make no fucking sense to me.”

“Have I _ever_? Karkat, Karkat, Karkat! You’re always walking around acting so angry and pissed off and I _know_ deep down, you’re just -”

You cut her off by tossing the straw wrapper at her, and she laughs, leaning forward. Her chair settles properly on the ground with a soft thud.

The two of you have always gravitated towards each other, in this sick way that makes you certain that if you weren’t _you_ , were you less possessive and filled with jealousy, if you didn’t stuff down your feelings with anger… well, the two of you probably would’ve stuck together.

Then again, you felt the same way about Sollux.

And in the end, he left you on the meteor to go with Aradia.

What an asshole.

* * *

It’s been a full perigree since you found out Dave and Jade are now a ‘couple.’ They’re dating, with all the shitbaggery that comes with it - you think they’re happier now that it’s out in the open, and you catch them smooching each other when they think you’re not watching. You know they go at it like hopbeasts - you’ve heard the noises they make when their bedroom doors are closed, and it frustrates you to know fucking end. Haha, get it, _fucking end_?

You want to pull your hair out. This shit’s ridiculous on every single level, piled high to the brim with manure and you’re trapped in it and watching the two of them love on each other like any regular pair of matesprits does. Jade looks at Dave all starry-eyed, and he holds her hand or lingers too long on touches and you want to hurl.

It’d feel less stupid if Terezi wasn’t hovering around you all the time, licking her lips and wiggling her body at you.

Like she is, right now.

You’re outside, in Jade’s stupid garden. Jade bought a trampoline for the backyard back in March, and you’ve all put it to use for plenty of things - jumping or just laying there or even sometimes struggling to share a meal on the bounce mat while Terezi occasionally moves too much and sends drinks flying.

Your bangs are spread over your face, slapping into them while Terezi jumps and you just lay there, bouncing up a tiny bit when she does. There’s an insect crawling over your arm, tickling the chitinous gray skin. Your clothes are sticking to your back - it’s starting to get hot, given it’s tailing towards July - and you’d fucking love it if someone would just turn on the water hose and spray you down.

Nobody does.

It’s just you and Terezi out here, anyways, and she’s more preoccupied with jumping up and down like a frog.

The sun is setting - you can tell by the way the grayish-blue sky, covering up the sun, darkens even more, faint reds and pinks and oranges scraping across the covering. When Terezi flops down onto the bounce mat, her hair spread across the bed and brushing against your arm, she looks up, and says, “Hmm, smells like orange creamsicles and cantaloupe up there! Is that strawberry lemonade I’m tasting on the tip of my tongue?”

She sticks her tongue out, and you swat at her arm. “You’ll get bugs in your mouth.”

“Let ‘em come! I am _starving_. It _has_ been a while since I’ve shoved a good, fat, juicy worm down my pipe.” She giggles, turning towards you with a sharp smile spread over her dark lips, leaning over to trail her hand down the same arm that bug was just crawling up. Her hands are rough from years spent using her cane-sword. “Tell me, Karkat, do you pity me?”

Your face heats up tremendously, scrambling to sit up, and you splutter out a, “Why the fuck are you asking?”

If you were a character in one of those human cartoons, steam would be coming out of your ears and blood would run down your nose, revealing to the world what a fucking freak you are. 

Or, maybe it wouldn’t, because Terezi sits up, making the trampoline shift underneath you, and balls her hands into fists and puts them underneath her chin, blowing out a gust of air to push some hair strands out of her face. “I am simply asking because it occurred to me, and you may find this an incredibly ridiculous train of thought, and you would be right, for once, but - our beloved roommates are currently in the throes of a passionate flush romance, and then there is us.”

You rub at your temples, letting out a hiss of breath between your teeth. “You’re kidding me. What the fuck do Harley and Strider have to do with me having or not having feelings for you? I did, when we were _wigglers_ , sure, but that was fucking sweeps ago! It all got tossed to the wayside because -”

She cuts you off, sniggering. “I am taking the law into my own hands and cutting off your sentence right there, Karkat. As much as I would love to hear you bemoan your very existence, wah wah wah, and complain about how you ruined the semi-relationship we had, with all that vacillating and flipping and quadrant-smearing, I am not asking about that! I’m asking if you pity me. It’s a very simple question, has a yes or no answer, potentially a ‘maybe’ if you have not thought about it in a while.”

“Uh,” you say, because you never actually thought she’d ask you something like this! You figured you’d be dead in a ditch, covered in vultures like the moronic fool you are, before Terezi would question if you had pitiful feelings for you. “As fucking tremendous a question as that is, I don’t think I really have an answer. I mean, in the end, what the fuck is pity? Is it just red feelings for another troll, or is it more than that? Does having pitch or ashen feelings count towards pity? Do we, as a species, NEED to feel pity towards someone in order to love them?”

“You,” Terezi says, “are ridiculously overthinking this! Calm your nubby little horns.”

You lay back on your arms, propped up and staring up at the barely-there twinkle of stars in the sky, a chill against your skin from the lack of warmth, wind rustling through the leaves of Jade’s apple and peach and pear trees, the nearly-rancid smell of compost and fertilizer and fresh-mown grass making your nose twitch with how downright pungent it is.

Insects hum and skitter about the grass, and you can hear it, even now, with how quiet it is between the two of you, silence stretched out thin and tense and easily broken. The lights have come on, lighting up the stone path you helped Jade lay down, twinkling where they’re strung from the trees. You can practically feel the heat from them, given how close to summer it is.

“Yes,” you finally say, and sigh heavily. “I still have feelings for you.”

“I thought so,” says Terezi, quiet-voiced. “It’s a bit obvious. As much as I love to reminisce on our wigglerhood issues, the smearing and flipping and vacillating, how, in the end… well, you remember what happened, probably a smidgen better than I, given how much you beat yourself up about every little thing you have ever done or tried to do, Mr. Melodrama.”

“We’ve gone over this before, you’re way more melodramatic than I am. I may be a worthless, vacuous shitstain on the face of trollkind as we know it -”

“If it’s any consolation, I understand. I, too, often feel like a shitstain on the face of trollkind.” Terezi gives you this semi-elated look, before it softens up again, her face a tad more teal than usual. “We helped build this world, Karkat, being a teensy bit melodramatic when there is room for that cannot possibly be a bad thing.”

“There’s such a thing as _too much_ melodrama.”

“Is there?”

You roll your eyes at her, your red meeting her red. “Yes. There is. As much as I’d love to crack wise about just how many ridiculously dramatic flicks I’ve seen, I’m not going to. It’s just looneyblock nonsense, anyways, like you’re being right now and have been for the past perigree, if not longer. Maybe your entire damn life has been leading up to being a fucking bilgespewer on this trampoline, shittying nonsense out of your mouth like the world’s your load gaper.”

“Oh, far from me to correct you on how ‘looney’ I am! We all know I’m the ‘quirky’ one.” She raises a brow, before giving a shallow, muted chuckle, far from the psychedelic mess of color she usually is. It sends a pang of worry through you, before you realize that’s burgeoning on pale, with the way you nearly lean over and pap her. “I may be the one who prances about, speaking nonsense and licking things and reminding people that I am blind and solely see from color, using the universe itself as my word-toilet -”

You don’t let her finish. “Shut up.”

“Oh, are you going to preach at me, now? Should I lean back, relax, perhaps pop some popcorn and keep my ears wide open, awaiting your lengthy speech about how wrong I am?”

You watch her shift, and the trampoline shifts underneath you.

“All I said was ‘shut up’, so stop presuming I’m planning on shouting nonsense at you while you eat microwavable popcorn and throw it at me like you do the TV. I’ve SEEN you do that.”

“Well, sometimes, the people on the television happen to bug me! So I throw popcorn at them. Serves them right for getting the intricacies of justice so wrong.” Terezi’s mouth does that dimple-thing, mouth curved into a pseudo-frown. “But this is besides the point! Your feelings for me seem to be a universal constant, you know. You can pine after me all you like -”

“I am NOT pining after you.”

“- or yearn, or wish, or long,” she says, ignoring your outburst, “but it doesn’t change that it has been sweeps.”

“Then why the _fuck_ did you bring it up in the first place?” You’re feeling even more incensed than usual - which, honestly, isn’t that much nowadays. “What’s the point of dragging my feelings into this if it doesn’t matter? You’re right! It HAS been sweeps! All that time spent typing over each other, or me barging into memos while you roleplayed with Nepeta in your fruity rumpus partytown nonsense - that was almost three fucking sweeps ago! What does it matter? Why the fuck do you care?”

“Well, do you remember what I said a bit back? About how, when John retconned everything, my other me told him to write ‘you don’t need him’ for me? So I would know I did not need you. Or Dave, or Gamzee, to be fair! Apparently, your advances on me in that timeline were quite confusing to me, and well, I can’t help but agree with my alternate self, given they were quite confusing here, too. It was needlessly complicated, and your subsequent attempts in that timeline to push yourself into my quadrants were ridiculous.”

You don’t say anything to that. She’s right - you don’t know much about the timeline Egbert and Lalonde 2.0 come from, but you do know that it was one of the worst timelines possible, doomed from the start.

“That version of me dated Dave.”

“No shit. Of course you did. He was a self-proclaimed ‘coolkid’, right up your alley.”

Terezi laughs, slightly, but it’s pained. “Then I wound up in an unhealthy kismesistude with that you’s moirail, while you attempted to convince Dave to vacillate with me, so that you could have me, without forcing me to leave Dave. In the end, though, I am quite certain you were happy when he broke up with me, because he didn’t like that I was, quote-enquote, ‘cheating’ on him with a clown!”

“There’s no way in hell I was _happy_ you lost your matesprit,” you say, through gritted teeth.

“You trusted me enough to tell me your blood color,” Terezi says, completely ignoring what you just said, and there’s a pang in her voice when she speaks. “Do you remember when your neighbor was culled, and you asked me to move in with you?”

That was forever and a half ago, when you were six sweeps - or at least, it feels like forever has come and gone since. “Yeah. Of course I do. You were my friend.”

“But you wanted more. You wanted to be the dashing threshecutioner, with his beautiful legislacerator matesprit, and maybe even a nice psionic kismesis to bicker with -”

The second she says that, you’re off the trampoline. You don’t care if you were getting somewhere with this conversation. You _don’t_ want to hear about _Sollux_. You don’t want to hear about how you fucked up, because you know you did. You know that you fucked up, you know that you’ve been nigh-obsessed with her for as long as you can remember. You’ve always held a torch for her, and you wonder if you always will.

Maybe you will. Maybe you won’t.

You slam open the screen door and head inside. Dave and Jade are on the couch, doing their regular cuddly-banter thing, and they look up at you when you storm past them to head upstairs.

“Hey, dude, you -”

You flip him off - well, you’re pretty sure you do, your eyes are a bit blurry, and you hear Jade go, “uh.” You can hear them scrambling off the couch, untangling their limbs from each other.

There’s no way in hell you’re dealing with this shit right now, you just slam open your bedroom door and shove it closed behind you, crawling underneath your sheets and burrowing into the blankets like some forest animal.

You hate crying. You fucking hate it, but you’re a worthless piece of shit who’s good at nothing except fucking things up. Why the hell did you say ‘yes’ when Terezi asked you? You should’ve lied, fumbled around an excuse for your behavior in the past few sweeps. Should’ve said you felt nothing, but instead you fucked up, admitted that you did still pity her, and that makes you feel sick to your stomach, acid burning in your throat.

God, you’re so fucking stupid.

Sollux didn’t want you, either, and every time you think about him you remember how he barely said goodbye to you when he left with Aradia, heading off half-dead and half-blind to the bubbles to explore and adventure.

He could’ve stayed.

You _wanted_ him to stay.

There’s a knock on your door, and you wipe away the reddish tears bubbling at the edge of your eyes, grabbing a tissue off your nightstand and blowing your nose before tossing it into the waste bin, and groaning as you open up the door.

It’s Dave, and he has an awkward look on his face, the kind he gets when things breach too far into awkwardness, when you know he’s going to try and fail to be sympathetic and just wind up cracking jokes at you until you pretend your feelings have passed.

You almost close the door on him, but you don’t.

“Hey,” he says, and you roll your eyes, turning away from him. “Look, I dunno what the hell happened out there, but you coming in and slamming the door doesn’t really bode well for the delicate structure of this household.”

“Hivehold,” you say, instinctively correcting his dumb human wording.

“Sure. Delicate structure of this hivehold, we can go with that.” His hands are stuffed in his pockets. “Mind if I just meander in here, sit on your bed or something?”

“Whatever.”

“Sweet,” says Dave, even though this situation is far more sour than anything else, and you groan into your hands. He plops down on your bed, and you follow suit, collapsing onto the mattress and drawing the blankets around your shoulders like it’ll cut you off from the rest of the world. “Dude, you’re one of my best friends, you’re a great guy, and I care about you a lot. Maybe that’s sappy, probably is - I mean, I’m shit with sap. There’s way too much sap in my throat just waiting to spring out in a wordy display of shitty affection.”

“You talk way too fucking much.”

“And you don’t? Pot, kettle, black. Take a look in a mirror, why don’t you.”

“Rather not,” you say, and turn away from him.

He sighs. “Okay, so what the hell happened out there? Did Terezi hit on you? Did a meteor pass over, giving you a sense of impending doom, or something? God, are you like, eggnant or something?”

“No, no, and - what the fuck is that?”

“Like, egg-pregnant. I dunno, it’s a hentai thing.”

“I don’t want to hear about your dumb, animated human porn. Trolls cannot bear offspring like that, we evolved far beyond being able to become gravid with grubs - the mothergrub does all of the work for us. I’ve told you this a thousand fucking times, do you need to clean your ears out?”

“Nah, nah, I’m good, I know. I do. Really. Color me knowledgeable, slap a medal on me for knowing way too much about Alternian history. You didn’t answer my question, though.”

“Terezi asked me if I still have feelings for her.”

Dave doesn’t say anything for a moment, and you watch the clock on your bedside table go from 7:57 to 7:58 to 7:59 in what feels like a very long scrawl of time, the red analog numbers counting up towards eight pm. When it does, in fact, change to 8:00, Dave finally opens his mouth, and you turn towards him, wondering what the fuck he was thinking about for nearly three whole minutes.

“I dunno what game she’s playing there, but we _all_ know you like Terezi.”

You scoff. “I’m sure it’s not as obvious as you think it is. You just live with me.”

“Ha. You think everyone we know has no idea? Dude, bro, my man, my good sir. You’re about as obvious about your flush-crush as someone trying to drag an elephant into an apartment complex is. Elephants are fuckin’ huge, man, that shit would catch everyone’s attention, especially with all that - actually, I dunno what noises elephants make, but they make a lot of it. Can you imagine trying to shove an elephant through a door? No way that’d fit, it’d just end up sitting on your sorry ass with it’s own sorry ass.”

“Okay, okay, okay, I get it. I’m obvious.” You groan. “That’s about what she said.”

“So why’d she ask?”

“I don’t know! Apparently to poke fun at me, and my alternate self from John’s timeline.” You guess her memories from that timeline are still pretty strong. “I get it, I’m an asshole! I’m a waste of breathing air! She asked, and then when I asked why, reminded me it’s been fucking _sweeps_ since the two of us were… I don’t even know what that qualifies as.”

“Flirtationship? Romantic entanglement? Awkward teenhood crush? A flirty powwow of feelings that qualify as neither flush or pitch, according to all sources?”

“What sources.”

“You. Terezi. Kanaya. Also Vriska referenced it once, I guess she and ‘Rezi talked about the two of you enough times that she brought it up to me.” Dave scratches at the side of his face, picking at a red spot on his chin. Humans have weird biology. “Back when she was attempting to pitch at me, before she decided Rose was better in the blackrom department, I guess. Which, sure, good for her and Rose.”

“Did -” You pause, and look at him, confused. “She tried to _what_?”

“Oh, yeah. Vriska had a mad pitch hankering for my magnum dong. She’s a seriously sloppy kisser, just so y’know. It never went anywhere, she pushed me against a wall and kissed the fuck out of me one time total, tried some pithy come-ons and called me a bitch. Honestly, it only confused me, ‘cause she and Rose were starting up their whole mess a week later. I dunno, man, I’m not one for quadrants.”

And there’s your huge problem, one of the reasons the two of you never wound up in a quadrant. Despite that Dave clearly has pale feelings for John - and you were so certain for Jade, too - he refuses to acknowledge that he’s capable of quadrants! It’s ridiculous! Maybe not pitch, maybe not ashen, but. Well.

“I don’t care,” you say, because you don’t. The image of Vriska and Dave making out is now smacking you upside the head and trying to force you to consider it as a thing that could’ve genuinely happened.

“Right. Yeah. Sorry, I kinda went off on a tangent there. My point is, _everyone_ knows you two had a thing for each other, albeit a slightly one-sided thing. If you hadn’t gone all weird on her ass, the two of you -”

“I know! We’d probably be together, right now, like a good, healthy flush couple.”

Dave clears his throat. “I was gonna say, would’ve dated on the meteor until inevitably breaking up, but.”

“Yes, Dave, I want your opinions on romance. Because you have CLEARLY had several relationships and romantic partners.”

“Hey, me and Jade have been dating for like, four months. That’s way more than -” You elbow him, and he snickers. “Look, you were kids at the time, it wouldn’t’ve worked out long, y’know? Y’woulda eventually broken up for whatever reason. Maybe you’d get here and realize there’s other options, or maybe she’d want to explore other quads and you’d pitch a hissy fit.”

“I wouldn’t do _that_ ,” you grumble. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Dude. D’you really think you could’ve handled that two years ago?”

You press your lips together in a thin line, lips curled slightly over your teeth. “I guess not, but who the fuck knows? I didn’t get a chance to find out, because I ruined things with her. And I ruined them even worse now! She probably hates me, and _not_ in a pitch way, _before_ you bother with asking.”

“Wasn’t gonna.” He pats you on the shoulder. “It’s ‘Rezi, you really think she’s that upset you’re still crushing on her? Bro. Dude. My good man. You’ve had incredible restraint to not go leaping after her the second she made googly eyes at you. I mean, not that she doesn’t get flirty with a lot of people, but… well, I mean. If I’d actually been cool and confident when we were kids -”

“Let me guess. You would’ve actually acted on your horrible pick-up lines?”

“Oh, hell yeah. Terezi’s pretty smokin’.” Dave twiddles with the buttons on his colorful shirt, the one he wears open over _another_ shirt. You’ll never understand him. “But, like - look, we were kids back then. You were a kid back then. Thirteen year olds are assholes. The proof’s in the pudding, we were all fucking dicks at the time. Besides - Terezi still likes you. I mean, I doubt she’d hit on people she doesn’t at least platonically like. And, I mean, you know that. So what the fuck did she say that’s actually got you sniffling like some kid who fell off a scooter?”

You can’t look at him. You just can’t. You turn away, arms crossed over your chest, staring at the clock once more.

“She brought up Sollux.”

“Shit. Man, that’s harsh.”

You groan and turn back towards him, expecting to see him on the verge of laughter. He actually looks sad, that shitty sympathetic look scrawled all over his dumb and incredibly attractive face. _Ugh, no, thinkpan, don’t do that._ You are NOT going to think about him in a non-platonic manner ever again.

But he’s looking at you like he wants to shoosh-pap you, and you really wouldn’t be opposed.

Fuck your feelings and how they shift and change and smear into other quadrants like a deranged lunatic. Fuck how you felt everything possible for Sollux, how your feelings for Terezi shoved their way in-between quadrants and sat there while you played ping-pong with it. Fuck your pitch crush for John and your flush crush for Jade and your ridiculously stupid quadrant-blurring crush on Dave Strider.

“She was right,” you say. “She told me that I wanted to be the hero, that I wanted my quadrants filled, have my grubcake and eat it too. But I’m a _mutant_. I would’ve been culled on Alternia for even considering doing my duty and filling a pail, if I wasn’t culled far fucking sooner simply for existing. And Terezi would’ve been culled, too, given she’s blinder than one of your human bats, and Sollux would’ve been shipped off to helmsman duty on one of the Condescension’s ships, and… nightdreaming about them was a fucking ridiculous idea, seeing as it wasn’t even an option. Even being _friends_ with me was dangerous! And she knew that!”

You never had a chance with either of them - and maybe that’s why it hurts so much. Loving them, pitying them, would’ve been your downfall.

“Maybe,” says Dave, “you should talk to her about that. Set things straight.”

You sigh, and lay back on your bed, hands in your hair. “Ugh. More brilliant ideas from Dave Strider. I highly fucking doubt that’d be smart.”

“Dude. It’s Terezi. She’s one of your friends.”

“My point precisely! She’s my friend! She’ll -”

“Abandon you because you have feelings for her?”

“Yes!”

Dave laughs, and the sound startles you. “Did she do that last time? She used to have feelings for you, too, if you haven’t forgotten in this little pity party you got goin’ on here. And last I checked, it’s _Terezi_. She’s chiller than the damn icebox. She’s so chill about things that you could use her to store popsicles so they don’t melt. Stick some mochi up in there, s’cool, she’s arctic.”

“That makes no sense, and frankly, is incredibly disgusting.”

“‘That makes no sense and is incredibly disgusting’ is my middle name.”

“I thought it was -”

He cuts you off with a ‘shhhh.’ “No, no middle names here. I don’t _actually_ have one.”

“I don’t understand the importance of having three names. Your human naming cultures are ridiculous.”

“I think it was more of a west thing, honestly. Something ‘bout giving your kid a second name smack dab in the middle of first and last so if a demon showed up, they couldn’t steal your kid. Or maybe it was a fae thing. The myths around those were nasty shit.”

“I don’t care,” you say.

“I know. Look. Just… give it a shot. Talk to her. It’s Terezi, the worst she’ll do is give that horrific laugh at you. Shit sounds like nails on a chalkboard. You just gotta remember to see her as a person, and not the object of your long term desire. Uh, I _may_ be mangling that.”

Your brows raise at him. “You’ve talked about this before?”

“Oh, uh.” His face reddens a bit. “No. Definitely not. I haven’t been talking to anyone about anything, and frankly, you suggesting I even HAVE conversations with people is really fuckin’ rude, bro.”

“Was it Terezi? Jade? _Rose_?”

“I have _no_ idea what you’re talkin’ about.”

“You _have_ been!” Holy shit! Of course he has! He’s been spreading the little seeds of secrets you share with him throughout your friend group, and now, everyone knows about your awkward past-crush on Terezi that you’ve been nursing at, feeding into overtime. “What the fuck, Strider?”

“Hey, hey, hey, chill. It’s not like that. It’s -” Dave sighs, and covers his face for a second, before his hands drop back down. “I didn’t bring it up, okay? I didn’t say anything about it. Terezi just - look, don’t get me wrong on this -”

“Get you wrong on _what_.”

“Terezi asked me if I thought you still liked her. This was like, a few weeks back, maybe two or three? I’m shit with time. You can give me information on going through a time loop, and I can do that. Hell, I could tell you my theories on how time travel works, the idea that it’s basically a gigantic fucking piece of paper and a time player just, squishes it together to get to where they wanna go, you dig me? Like opening a book on the chapter you want it. That… probably makes no sense.”

“It doesn’t.”

“Point is, I’m shit with _when_ it was. But - she asked me if I thought you still liked her, after all this time. And I told her I didn’t know, not something I talk about with you, we just sit around and shoot the shit like any ol’ eighteen year old boys do. Which, guess she sniffed right through that lie, told me I was a bitchy fraudulent little man, something along those lines. She told me that she had a feeling you did, because you get kinda weird around her.”

What the fuck? No, you don’t! You aren’t weird around her. “That’s bullshit! I’m perfectly fucking sane and normal around her.”

“Ehh, maybe it’s her definition of weird. Dunno. Can’t say for sure. Anyways, back to this story, m’getting off topic. She goes,” and he starts up a really horrible rendition of Terezi’s voice, way too high-pitched and scratchy on your ears, “‘Dave, I know he’s got feelings for me, I just need proper confirmation. You know a girl can’t go to trial without evidence’, or something.”

“That sounds like her. You, however, don’t. Please don’t ever do that again.”

He laughs. “Sure, sure, I won’t.”

“Now, can you cut to the fucking point already?”

“Right, yeah, sorry. We talked for like, I dunno, maybe fifteen minutes? And she goes, ‘I just wish he treated me more like his friend and not the object of his desires.’ Or, whatever it was she said. Told me that when the two of you interact, it’s like you’re just two bros chillin’, and then… it’s like, _lately_ , she says something or does something and flips a switch and suddenly you remember who you’re hanging out with. Like, I dunno, your feelings just flicker on and your brain goes, ‘wait, remember this is Terezi, right?’ I guess I kinda get it, I spent way too much time trying to impress Jade, but I’m - well - _always_ this fucking shitty.”

He gestures at himself, and you groan - again. “It’s not that I don’t love spending time with Terezi, but -”

“But?”

You see the way he looks at you, like you’re a rubix cube he’s trying to figure out, messing around with the parts and trying to line it all up in gray. There’s no gray on a rubix cube, and you, unlike Strider, are usually pretty good at metaphors, but this one’s a blithering piece of clusterfuckery.

“It’s… complicated,” you say, finally.

“Uncomplicate it.”

You glare at him, your forehead pinching together. “I can’t! It’s none of your business, anyways! _You’re_ the one who’s always making things complicated, you and your damn matesprit, acting like you’re not together for almost four perigees, pretending that you’re just friends.”

He shrugs. “I’ll give you that. But you don’t gotta uncomplicate it to me. Just talk to her.”

 _Oh_ , you think. “I don’t want to make things even more awkward than they are, but…”

Well, maybe things have festered long enough. Maybe it’s time you sit down with Terezi, away from all of this, and get out your feelings, close this up and lay it to rest.

* * *

CG: I’M SORRY FOR RUNNING OFF ON YOU.  
CG: I KNOW I’M PRETTY SHIT WITH APOLOGIES. I AM VERY MUCH AN INSIPID, SHIT-SPEWING MESS, AND I THINK I CAN SPEAK FOR BOTH OF US WHEN I SAY THAT WE BOTH ALREADY KNEW THAT.  
CG: BUT I *AM* SORRY. INCREDIBLY.  
CG: I SHOULD’VE STAYED AND LISTENED. WORKED IT OUT WITH YOU. I DON’T KNOW, AND FRANKLY, I DO CARE BUT I’M TRYING REALLY HARD NOT TO, WHY YOU BROUGHT IT UP IN THE FIRST PLACE. BUT IT’S NOT THAT IMPORTANT. OBVIOUSLY. AND I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHY THE FUCK I’M BRINGING IT UP NOW.  
CG: YOU BROUGHT UP SOLLUX AND I JUST  
GC: OH K4RK4T, 1 D1DN'T 3V3N TH1NK 4BOUT TH4T  
GC: 1 M34N, OBV1OUSLY 1 D1D, SORT OF, BUT 1 D1D NOT M34N TO R3M1ND YOU  
CG: IT’S OKAY. I KNOW YOU DIDN’T.  
CG: WELL. ACTUALLY.  
CG: I DIDN’T KNOW THAT UNTIL NOW.  
CG: BUT IT’S EASY TO PRESUME YOU DIDN’T PURPOSEFULLY MAKE ME UPSET. UNLESS YOU WERE FLIRTING WITH ME, IN WHICH CASE, I GUESS??  
CG: I KNOW I’VE BEEN A TREMENDOUS ASS. I ALWAYS HAVE. IT’S DISGUSTING.  
CG: BUT I DON’T WANT TO LOSE YOU AS MY FRIEND.  
CG: I KNOW THIS ISN’T GOOD TO DO OVER TEXT, BUT. I DO CARE ABOUT YOU. PLATONICALLY. JUST SO YOU’RE AWARE. YOU’RE INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT ME, FOR WHATEVER BATSHIT REASON. FUCK IF I KNOW.  
CG: ACTUALLY. I DO.  
CG: KNOW, I MEAN.  
GC: YOU C4N QU1T YOUR R4MBL1NG NOW, K4RK4T  
GC: 1 KNOW WH4T YOU M34N. 1 4M NOT GO1NG TO R3FUT3 TH4T, OK?  
CG: HAHAHAHA.  
CG: I DOUBT YOU COULD. REFUTE IT, I MEAN.  
GC: DO YOU DOUBT MY 4B1L1TY TO D1SPROV3 4ND D1SCR3D1T 4NYTH1NG YOU S4Y??? WOW, TH4T 1S TH3 RUD3ST TH1NG YOU H4V3 3V3R S41D TO M3  
GC: 1 4M OFF3ND3D. 1NSULT3D.  
GC: WOUND3D, K4RK4T! YOU H4V3 WOUND3D M3!!  
CG: WOW, YOU BOUGHT A THESAURUS. GOOD JOB. YOU HEAR THAT THUNDEROUS NOISE? THAT’S ME, CLAPPING, WHILE I BANG MY HEAD ON MY KEYBOARD.  
CG: GJCGFKASLAAldsldstRFGOFPGGf  
GC: OH YOU 4CTU4LLY D1D 1T  
CG: OF COURSE I DID.  
CG: DID YOU THINK I WAS BEING FACETIOUS??  
GC: 1 4M NOT SUR3 YOU 4R3 3V3N C4P4BL3 OF TH4T  
CG: DAMN RIGHT I’M NOT!  
CG: WAIT.  
CG: WELL. I MEAN. I AM. OF COURSE I AM. ANYONE WITH A PAIR OF FUCKING GLOBES IS CAPABLE OF BEING FACETIOUS. OBVIOUSLY.   
CG: THAT’S JUST… NOT MY POINT. AT ALL.  
GC: 4ND WH4T 1S YOUR PO1NT?  
GC: TH4T YOU'R3 SORRY??  
CG: WELL. YEAH. DUH.  
CG: BUT IT’S ALSO MORE THAN THAT, OK?  
CG: YOU’RE MY FRIEND. AND YEAH. I HAVE BEEN PINING OVER YOU, FOR A LONG TIME, BECAUSE I COULDN’T GET OVER YOU. WELL, I GUESS I DID, FOR A WHILE. I SEPARATED YOU FROM MY OLD FEELINGS FOR YOU. ISN’T THAT STUPID??  
CG: AND THEN.  
GC: WHY 4R3 W3 H4V1NG TH1S CONV3RS4T1ON OV3R P3ST3RCHUM  
GC: WOULDN'T 1T B3 34S13R TO H4V3 F4C3 TO F4C3  
GC: OR 4R3 YOU SC4R3D??  
CG: SCARED? PSHHHHHHHHH. ASFKKFGF.  
CG: IMAGINE THE LAUGHTER EMANATING FROM MY SQUAWK GAPER. CAN YOU HEAR IT??? I’M NOT SCARED.  
GC: TH3N T4LK TO M3 F4C3 TO F4C3, WOULDN'T 13 B3 34S13R  
CG: YOU JUST SAID THAT. YOU LITERALLY JUST SAID THAT.  
CG: FINE.  
CG: WE CAN TALK IN PERSON, ARE YOU HAPPY NOW???  
GC: Y3S, TH4NK YOU FOR 4SK1NG. 1 4M QU1T3 H4PPY  
GC: YOU COULD COLOR M3 PL34S3D 1F YOU L1K3  
GC: G1V3 M3 F1FT33N M1NUT3S??? L3T'S GO OUT 4ND T4LK

You collapse into your chair.

It’s been almost a full day since you got into it with Terezi - you spent the night with Kanaya and Rose, an impromptu houseguest they didn’t really seem to mind. Their new house is nice, but you much prefer your bedroom - Rose and Kanaya are coloring their entire house dark jewel tones and the entire place stinks of paint. You’ve never liked sniffing paint.

Terezi does, though.

Speaking of Terezi, you get dressed and meet her downstairs, by the door. She’s wearing her usual multi-colored apparel - you think that might actually be Dave’s shirt from the other day, which makes your stomach hurt. Shit, if you were wrong about Jade and Dave, maybe there’s something going on there, too. Dave’s taken in flush, and claims to be unable to do pitch… maybe pale? Is that why she hasn’t been going on pale dates?

“Hey, Karkat!” Terezi says, and gives you that toothy grin that makes your heart hurt as much as your stomach.

“Hey.”

“I was thinking we’d take a walk, see where it takes us,” she says, and holds up her wallet. It’s bright red. Of course it is. “Is that okay with you? Would not want to overwhelm you with all the sights and smells of the big city.”

“We don’t even _live_ in a big city.”

“Well, we’re going to take the transportalizer _to_ the big city. By city I mean Alternia City, specifically Peixes Avenue - there are some nice shops over there. Does that work?”

At least it gives you somewhere else to look while you fundamentally break down every issue you’ve ever had to her. It’s a pale solicitation like no other, except that you don’t even feel pale towards her. So you nod, tugging at the bottom of your long-sleeved shirt. It’s hot outside, but you don’t _need_ to see the pity in her eyes at the scars on your arms, self-given.

You don’t want to explain that your self-hatred is that harsh.

And you don’t need confirmation that she already knows.

* * *

Peixes Avenue is bustling with activity, surprising given it’s mid-afternoon on a Thursday, but the nookcrunching assholes running around and talking loudly on their palmhusks and bumping into you without a clue who the hell you are, shoes clacking across the hot sidewalk, the harsh whine and crunch of tools from a construction sight - it’s a _bit_ much. Terezi doesn’t seem to mind. She breathes in the warm air, car exhaust and body odor and hot concrete, and relaxes, her shoulders loosening.

If you ignore the cars passing, and the sound of pop-y music playing from a women’s clothing store, you guess it’s nice. Plenty of food trucks, upscale stores, etc. Some people out with friends, animals, a few lusii with their wigglers. You pass under a colorful awning, the shade blocking out some of the heat as you and Terezi meander through.

“So,” she says, and looks at you - you can feel her eyes glaring into yours behind her bright red glasses. “I believe I owe you an apology for mentioning you-know-who.”

“Oh, forget it. I already know you’re sorry, can we move on?” You’re a bit jittery, the jerkshitting dunce you are, which you’d never fucking admit. “Look, we were having a decent conversation before YOU decided we couldn’t have it over the fucking internet.”

“We are adults, Karkat! Responsible, job-carrying adults. Although it is a casualty sad to shoulder, having serious conversations over Trollian is a thing of the past. _Especially_ now that we can both walk around in broad daylight - or close enough to it.”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it.” You shove your hands into your pockets, passing a flower shop with some brightly-colored pots sitting outside. Jade would love that. “Look, I’m sorry I ran off on you. I know I already said that, but I think it deserves another mention. I may be a shitty piece of work, but I shouldn’t have left just because you mentioned the one fucking person I’ve been trying my hardest to forget about.”

“He has been gone a while,” Terezi muses. “Aradia, too. I have a feeling they are out in the bubbles somewhere, the ones that remain. That black hole certainly took most of them.”

You laugh, albeit somewhat bitterly. “Of course it fucking did. I bet it took all of our asshole friends. God, I hated them.” You pause, staring at the pedestrians passing by - people who only exist because of those asshole friends of yours. “Well. Eridan was decent, and Kanaya is, too. And I guess Nepeta wasn’t too bad. Equius and Gamzee fucking sucked, but I guess I used to care about Gamzee. Back when we were a bunch of doltish wigglers.”

“We sure were a contradictory group.”

“Weren’t we?”

The two of you stop at a food truck for a moment - you buy a breakfast taco and a container of sugary-cold tea, and Terezi gets a snow cone at a nearby stall, licking into the green ice like she’s fondling a pair of rumplespheres. You shake the perverse image out of your head, continue wandering around, commenting on the outfits people think are socially acceptable to wear, the trolls pushing their noisy grubs around in strollers. There’s a few humans and carapaceans around, of course, but most of them are with a troll or two.

You glug down your tea, tossing the taco wrapper in a hand-painted garbage can. The paint can’t disguise the disgusting stench, but someone took a brush to the wood, and the colors are nice enough that Terezi stops to give it a sniff, before visibly gagging at the trash.

That’s quickly abandoned.

“Dave says you think I view you as some sort of trophy to be won,” you say. You can’t remember if that’s what he actually said, and you can’t remember if you told her that over Trollian or not. “Which is honestly complete looneyblock, and I’m beyond pissed that you’d even think so little of me, but I get where you’re coming from.”

Terezi pauses her assault on the snow cone. “Will you can it?”

You shut up.

“Good. Thank you. Look, Karkat… you are my friend. That may not be a word we really have in Alternia, but I care about you. In some definitions, you could consider me pitying you. Perhaps even loving you.”

Your face flushes at that. “But not -”

“Did I say that? Of course I still have feelings for you. But it’s been sweeps. I was not going to stand around waiting for you to grow some shameglobes and do something about your feelings, nor was I going to force your hand on anything.”

You stare at a skateboarding wiggler for a few moments before sighing. How the fuck did you not see this coming? _She still has feelings for you_? “It’s been a long few sweeps. We’re completely different people.”

“Yes. We are. But we also haven’t changed that much. You still think of yourself as a, and I believe this is a direct quote! What was it, a ‘shitstain on humanity’? Perhaps it was a ‘crochstain.’ I believe I have heard you say both.” She laughs, but you can hear the awkwardness in it.

Gog, this is fucking awkward.

“Then I don’t get it,” you say, pressing onward as the two of you walk. There’s a sign leading towards a park, and you steer that way - some fresh air and trees should get your thinkpan going properly. “Why even…”

“Bring it up? Nose around? Mention it in the first place? A good lawyer has to gather evidence before the trial, you know, make sure all of her cards are in the right order.”

“This isn’t a fucking trial, Terezi, it’s emotions. Those don’t go into something that fucking clinical.”

“Or do they?”

You groan - jegus you groan a lot, don’t you? But you’re honestly fucking incensed over this. Why the hell didn’t she just say something sooner? You may be an assmaggot on godtier levels, but you’re _her_ assmaggot. Her _friend_. You care about her regardless of if her nook is available for pailing - you couldn’t care less if you never get to kiss her. What matters is that she’s your friend, and that you can be there when she deigns to let you in.

“No, they don’t.”

“If you insist,” she says, and throws out what remains of her snowcone.

You pass a tattoo parlor and a hair salon and a laundromat before you finally reach the park entrance, wandering across the paths on your way to find somewhere to sit down. There’s wigglers throwing frisbees across the grass, people sitting on blankets or benches or at the fanciful gazebo, sitting there like it belongs in a painting. Terezi stops to smell the flowers, a butterfly flitting past and landing on her finger for a second, bright orange wings fluttering. She breathes in deep, like she’s considering eating it, before it flitters off.

_Of course I still have feelings for you._

_But it’s been sweeps._

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“About what?” she asks, turning towards the sound of your voice.

“About… us. This.”

She laughs, stumbling towards the park bench, plopping down with an audible noise, her legs crossed beneath her. You sit down beside her, staring at the people wandering about their business, smelling flowers and eating late lunches. You can see the sky, bright blue, through the gray-tinted shield above, hear the wind rustle through the grass and trees.

“Did I not?” she asks, and you look over at her, at the profile of her face, how her mouth twists into a grin that makes your stomach ache with want. “Last I checked, _I_ was the one who brought it up yesterday.”

“Yeah, in the shittiest fucking way.” You force yourself to look away from her when she says, “I know.”

“You know, I do care about you, right? You’re one of the few people who was with me through it all that I _actually_ care about and trust and respect.” Gog you’re already fucking this up. “Alternia was a death-trap designed fucking _exactly_ for people like yours truly, and _you_ were one of the only things that made staying alive and not offing myself worth it.”

“I think you overestimated that word choice being something I wanted to hear.”

“Jegus, Terezi. I don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to say. Do you want me to tell you that yeah, I pity you and love you and sometimes hate you? Do you _want_ me to tell you that your voice grates on my nerves in the best possible way? Do you want me to tell you that I want to kiss you, but the most important fucking thing is that I want to make sure you’re actually alive, and that I didn’t dream you being around?”

“Yes,” Terezi says, and you groan. Loudly. “I do. Continue.”

“Look - I don’t care in what capacity you exist around me. That’s the best way I can put it, I guess, but it’s the truth. How can you be such a moronic pustulefuck that you don’t see that I -”

She cuts you off with a wave of her hand, and when you look her directly on, she’s smiling. “Pustulefuck, hm?”

“Yes. You’re an idiot if you think I view you as some sort of object. Maybe I did when we were wigglers, but you’re a lot more to me than that. I’d much rather have you in my life as my roommate, completely and solely platonic, than not have you in it at all. I couldn’t care less if you felt the same or not - in fact, I think it’s stupid that apparently you do. Have you _looked_ at me?”

Your voice is rising in decibels as you speak, and you’re on your feet within a few seconds, turned towards her, your arms planted hard on your hips, nails digging into your pants.

She laughs. You glare at her.

“I’m blind,” she says, snickering, and you cover your face. “I cannot look at you. No offense, but that was bad wordplay.”

“You know what I mean! _I_ wouldn’t have feelings for _me_.”

“Wouldn’t you? Pitch, perhaps -”

You cut her off before she can finish that sentence. “No, we’re NOT bringing up that age-old debate. I wouldn’t be my own kismesis, _full fucking offense_ to myself.”

“Yes, yes, I know. Karkat, I know.”

“My point is that I don’t give a shit if I fill pails with you. I want you in my -”

You don’t get to finish your sentence because she, incredibly rudely, surges forward to cut you off once more, her mouth meeting yours. There’s way too much teeth, and her hand’s on your shoulder, and you’re not sure if you should kiss her back or not, so you pull away.

“I was _talking_ ,” you say, and she laughs.

“I want you in my life, too, you know,” she says, her hand still on your shoulder. Her skin’s cold, you can feel it through your shirt. “No quadrants or complications, I just want you to be yourself.”

Your face heats up. “I -”

“No, no, no. If you don’t want to, say so. But I am allowed to choose what I want in my life, Karkat. And I want you.” Her hand moves up, thumb grazes against your lip, and if you weren’t in public you’d probably kiss her again. But luckily, she doesn’t give a shit that you’re out in the middle of a park surrounded by people.

She kisses you again.

And again.

And again.

And were your life a romantic comedy, it’d end right here, with your hands on her shoulders, hers on your hips, your mouths pressed together, the camera panning away from the two of you and up towards the sky - but, fucking _thankfully_ , it does not end quite yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no smut this chapter solely 'cause i couldn't find a way to naturally fit in it (no idea why. just didn't wanna fit in here.) dunno WHY i'm saying that but hey.
> 
> also when karkat banged his head on the keyboard? that was actually me banging my head on the keyboard for Authenticity.


End file.
